Drive Fast and Take Chances

Driving up from Tucson to Phoenix this morning, I became a firm believer in Darwin’s Law.

I’m referring to the survival of the fittest, and I think this principle should be applied ruthlessly when talking about this world’s motor vehicle operators.

What makes grandma think that she can drive her sprawling, late-model baby blue Cadillac Eldorado at thirty-five miles per hour in a sixty-five mile per hour zone without running the risk of never again seeing her coiffed and beribboned Shih-Tzu, or playing with her darling grandchildren? Go home, grandma, and stay there.

Or that yahoo from Wisconsin, the one swerving across both lanes in his rusted-out Toyota Tercel with the flapping rear-quarter panels and the “I’d rather be Fishing” bumper sticker – this retard was either very drunk (at eight o’clock in the morning), or legally blind, as I’m certain he wouldn’t have been able to maneuver his car safely between the goalposts of the Minneapolis Metrodome. Why is he allowed on the road?

And how about that Forrest Gump-looking character in the cowboy hat – why does he feel obliged to pull out in front of me as I’m cruising along quite happily at five miles over the posted speed limit, making me slam on my brakes to avoid t-boning his stupid farm implement-filled Ford F-150 pickup truck?

As mankind evolved, evolution pruned away those branches of the human tree that did stupid things. Those who persisted in stupid behavior were eaten by predators, crushed by mastodons, frozen or starved to death. Today though, with our padded, cushy, law-filled, kinder and gentler society, people can do stupid things at will and nothing bad will happen to them.  

This is never so apparent as it is on our nation’s roadways.

The way I see it, if granny were to be crushed beneath the wheels of a semi-tractor trailer, some would weep, but it would basically be akin to her being dragged off by a saber-toothed tiger at the watering hole because she insisted on going out when she should have just stayed home and watched Jeopardy.

And if that lutefisk-sucking lumberjack swerves too far and slams his Tercel into a tree, falls into a mine pit, or flips his car into a Saguaro cactus, I can only hope he didn’t get a chance to breed and pass on his faulty genes.  

I’ve driven the Autobahn in Germany. I say this not to boast, but to express my certainty that a better system exists. On the Autobahn, there is no speed limit. People drive fast. But drivers there are courteous and they drive well. They use their turn signals, they stay in their own lanes, and they generally drive at a reasonable and safe speed.

But if you choose to scare yourself shitless by driving one-hundred sixty miles per hour in a rented five-speed Renault, that’s your deal, and they know enough to get the hell out of your way. And if you accidentally pile into a bridge embankment due to poor driving skills, or faulty equipment, or even dumb luck? Well, I guess you just got stomped on by a mastodon.

Let’s follow Germany. At least they got the driving part right.