Speed ad – Mistakes – Screenshot from YouTube video
Here is a very powerful video highlighting the virtue of driving cautiously and slowing down in anticipation of somebody else making a mistake:
When you are behind the wheel of a car, please know that you are in a killing machine, and your actions can negatively impact yourself and other people forever.
James D. Schwartz is the Editor of The Urban Country and is based in Toronto, Canada. You can contact James at james.schwartz@theurbancountry.com or follow him on Twitter.
More Articles Like This:
- Warning: Driving Kills, Maims, Suffocates & Ravages (Sept 2013)
- “Cars Kill So Many People It Staggers The Imagination” (July 2013)
- Taming The Beast On Our Streets (Dec 2013)
- Grandmother Writes Apology Letter After Driving Like “Idiot” (June 2013)
- Responsibility & Accountability On Our Streets (Apr 2011)
- No Cars. No Traffic Signals. No Deaths (June 2011)
- Our Backwards Approach to Road Safety (July 2011)
Here’s another one on drugged driving from the land of the freest… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8KAaf45g5U
This is, of course, precisely the wrong response to the fact that human beings will always make mistakes. Mistakes such as driving too fast.
The correct response is what is done in airline safety, railway safety, factory safety and everywhere else where safety is taken seriously and there are actual consequences for unsafe behaviour.
This response is one of mistake-proofing. Designing and engineering the infrastructure so that it is impossible to make mistakes in the first place. Or else to ensure that mistakes do not kill or injure anyone.
When it comes to road safety, this is the Dutch method of Duurzaam Veilig, which translates as “Sustainable Safety.” Among other things, this requires that residential streets NOT be through streets for car drivers, but only for walking, cycling and public transit. Car drivers are kept away from cyclists routes. And car-free zones are implemented where there are too many human beings for car drivers to endanger.
Scary car-crash films have been around ever since cars and cameras were invented. Their effectiveness has always been approximately zero. But Dutch streets are the safest in the world.
Let’s go for what works, not for what doesn’t work.
When you are behind the wheel of a car, please know that you are in a killing machine, and your actions can negatively impact yourself and other people forever. – http://qr.net/sqr6