From The Desk Of...
FROM THE DESK OF...
Rob Simpson Editorial Director Driver's Digest
Some things you just shouldn't take for granted
F
ew things get your heart pounding like a wreck. Or perhaps worse, when a member of your family is in one. That's what happened last month when I answered the phone and heard my wife's frantic voice telling me that she was just in an accident. "I hit someone," she said, "at the corner." The corner she was referring to was the intersection exiting from our neighborhood, no more than 150 yards from our house. So I ran out of the house and rushed up there. I arrived to find her shaken but otherwise unhurt, as were the driver and passenger from the other car. Between sobs, my wife told me what happened. She had left to go visit a friend shortly after 9 p.m. which, at this time of year in North Carolina, meant it was night. At the intersection, she checked for oncoming traffic and, seeing none, pulled out. That is when she "hit something," she said, but even at that point saw nothing. As we came to find out, the other vehicle did not have its lights on which, with its charcoal gray color, made it virtually invisible in the dark. Now my purpose in writing this is not to discuss my wife's driving, which is usually exemplary, or to talk about the damage to the car. Instead, I want to talk about technology ... and what the other driver had taken for granted. Soon after the collision, a police officer arrived on the scene. After making sure everyone was fine, he interviewed each party to get their statements. He talked to my wife first, and then spoke with the other driver, a young teenager who was driving her mother's car. Because my wife was certain that the other vehicle's lights were not being used, the officer asked the young lady. Her response, he later told us, was that "the lights are always on. They're automatic." When he asked her again if she knew whether her lights were on, she replied that "the car had just been inspected, so if there was a problem with the lights, someone would have told us." While I don't mean to compare an inexperienced teenager to a professional driver, there is something to learn from this. After all, with the growing number of safety technologies available for commercial trucks, how easy is it to take certain things for granted? As it turned out, the young lady's car did have an automatic setting for the lights; in that setting, the lights come on automatically as it grows dark. The problem was that the switch had been turned to the OFF position. She simply didn't realize it. In commercial trucking, the driver is still the single most important safety device in any vehicle. With CSA 2010 placing greater responsibility (and penalties) on the driver than ever before, drivers put themselves at risk when they start to take things for granted or believe that any technology can replace the care, courtesy, and competence with they operate their trucks.
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