It's Official: SUV Owners Are Stupid

I don't believe that safety is as illusory as you think..... Over the last decade, crash survivability has made great strides. People, however, are taking more chances, exposing themselves to more danger and allowing greater distractions to encroach on their driving environment. The real question remains.... what is a life worth?

There is a finite point where safety is cost prohibitive...... designing two similar autos so that a 50 mph head on collision is survivable is a reality. Designing an auto so that a 50 mph head on collision with 80,000 or 100,000 pounds of truck and freight is survivable would put the auto out of the reach of 99% of the motoring public. At the same time, we still realise that we have a greater chance of survivng an "average" accident than we ever had..... hardly an illusion.

If we set about our daily lives with an attitude of defeatism (oh, well, I'm gonna die anyway), we can easily become cavalier about safety issues. I'd rather enjoy NOT being a statistic...... yes, every moment I live brings me a moment closer to my demise - I will try my utmost to ensure that I am not the engineer of my own demise (even when I throw my leg over the saddle of my "donorcycle").

No matter how safe we try to make a vehicle, the onus is still on the motoring public to conduct themselves with responsibility and in a safe manner..... we cannot continue trying to blame our mistakes an everyone else. An accident.... ANY accident is the culmination of one or more mistakes an I defy anyone to show me an accident without any culpability.

Sadly, I know I will continue to scrape idiots and innocents alike from our highways with a stick and a spoon.... Safety is not an airbag or a seatbelt or a crumple zone.... safety is a system and it starts with the nut behind the wheel...

Jim Warman snipped-for-privacy@telusplanet.net

I said safety is an illusion, not that safety improvments are an illusion. Absolute personal safety is a goal that will never be achieved.

People, however, are

Can't argue with that.

The real question

A question that has no answer in this context.

My original point, exactly.

designing two

True, but being safer is not the same as being safe.

You call it "defeatism", I call it "realism".

we can easily become cavalier about safety issues. I'd

And I hope you (and I) continue to enjoy that distinction. However, I'm realist enough to know that shit happens, despite our best efforts.

yes, every moment I live brings me

Have you taken any MSF courses? I highly reccommend them. I do it at least every other year. You'll be amazed at the improvment in your riding and avoidance skills.

Ahhhh... a dueling partner....

The only way to be truly safe is to either already dead, or never born. This is life.... Being 'safer' is better than not being safe at all. Much like our chosen proffesions... none of us will ever know everything there is to know yet a good knowledge of what and why is better than abject ignorance.

There is absolutely no use in zeroing in on motoring with your mindset.... we could easily choke to death on a dry garlic rib, fall in the bath tub or be mistaken as a postmaster by an agitated mail clerk. Dry garlic ribs require common sense, slippery bathtubs require common sense, postal workers..... well, I guess they're postal workers...... Motoring..... that sounds a lot like a common sense thing. Going 60 miles per hour (and I don't care what we're gong 60 miles per hour in) is a lot more dangerous than going 6 miles per hour and, as such, deserves common sense.... lots of it.

In this life, we shall never, ever be truly safe..... having a car that is 'safer' is not an illusion...... thinking that the car is safe under all circumstances and in all conditions IS an illusion and speaks more of people than machine. To abdicate our personal responsibility to ourselves and those around us is a travety. To assume that our safer car will save us from our own idiocy is nothing less than stupid. We desparately need to realise that committing to an act without thinking about it's varied and convoluted possibilities is shear folly.... we are imperfect and the sooner we realise this and deal with it correctly, the better we shall all be.

To carry your thinking a little further.... dry garlic ribs should measure

5" by 5" so we can't choke on them..... we should wear golf cleats when we shower... toothbrushes should be too big to fit in our mouthes..... electricity is bad - we should remove electricity from our home lest we have a fire or get zapped.

Total safety will always be an illusion and it doesn't centre around the automobile...... yes, absolute safety will never be achieved - but what does that have to do with the cost of a human life????

Jim Warman snipped-for-privacy@telusplanet.net

culpability.