Driving Is A Challenge

Driving throughout the shore is a major challenge and despite on going road projects it won’t get much better in the future. Let’s face it, as the population grows there are more and more vehicles on the road and much of the work being done might help today but tomorrow is a different story.

With that said the biggest obstacle to safe travel is not the roads but those who use them. We can blame things out of our control all we want but the bottom line is we’re the biggest culprits for several reasons. Those can be based on age….young drivers are inexperienced, reckless by nature, easily distracted and too often unaware of the responsibility that goes with driving.
At the other end of the spectrum you have older drivers who in some cases should not be on the road. They are often confused, unaware of what’s happening around them, don’t have good vision or reflexes and are at times an accident waiting to happen. But if an effort to remain independent they refuse to give the keys us.

Between the young and old is the middle where most of us are and while we like to fault others we’re more a part of the problem than the solution. Many of us are always in a hurry, racing from one place to the next. When the light turns yellow that’s our signal to step on the gas…we don’t stop at stop signs but rather slow down…jamming on the brakes is a way of life because we’re constantly tailgating and yield signs are completely ignored. Then there are my two pet peeves…directional signals and turning right on red.
Using those turn signals obviously takes too much effort so they are basically useless to many drivers who would rather you guess what they are about to do. As for right on red…whatever happened to stopping first?

Oh and have I not mentioned how we are big hypocrites in many cases. Have we not lectured our children on how important it is to concentrate when driving? Yet we’re the ones who spend most of our commute talking on the phone, eating and drinking, smoking, playing with the radio, reading and writing….in other words everything but pay attention to what’s taking place on the road. And when we have an accident who do we blame? The other guy, poor road conditions, our car…anything but ourselves. We really do need to look in the mirror sometimes.