Driving is a Life Issue

If I were a less attentive cyclist, I would probably be dead, or screaming in pain, my fatless frame spread-eagled across some poor, inattentive driver’s hood. Not that some cars wouldn’t benefit aesthetically from my attractive body displayed across the front. The simple hood ornament is so very yesterday. Life-sized figurative car art: that’s the future.

Yeah, I almost got run over today. I almost get run over a lot of days, as the suburban drivers in the Dallas area raise negligent driving to an art-form. They all seem to follow the same illegal and unsafe rules, such as placing the back tires on the thick white line before an intersection. Very few people seem to walk anywhere; cities in Texas don’t generally seem made for pedestrian travel, and so drivers making right-hand turns can, perhaps, be forgiven for looking only to the left before turning. Thing is, I am often on the right, ready to cross, having the right of way, staring at the back of the soon-to-be-turning driver’s head who has no thought to the possibility of my existence. I could deal with people not knowing I exist when I was in high school. On the road? Not so much. So I wait, sometimes pretending to move forward while keeping myself out of harm’s way, just in case the driver happens to turn his head to gain a newfound appreciation for looking toward the exact spot he plans to drive over. I’ll always be a teacher, even if I’m not in the classroom.

These near-near-death experiences have got me thinking more about a friend of mine’s argument that how we drive is an important life issue. I see his point first hand. There really is a pro-life way of driving and an anti-life way of driving. With all due disrespect, I must say that Dallas area drivers don’t strike me as the most pro-life of drivers. To say many of them are reckless is an understatement. I’ve driven in a number of these United States, and the drivers here are the worst I’ve seen. Ohio drivers who go three mph under the speed limit in the fast lane of the freeway are the most annoying. I don’t have a solution to my daily cycling dangers, but I mention all this in hopes that someone who nearly has, nearly will, or really will paint his car Kyle might think twice before blindly turning right. (VN)