Country Club road has a sharp turn near the airport property.
It is a trap that catches incompetent drivers.
It caught another one the other day.
After destroying the gate, the motorist fled in his red vehicle.
This is part of the hidden costs our society pays in exchange for tolerating low driving competency. The costs are somewhat random and most often fall on the innocent, like this gate owner.
We protect the perpetrators of these injustices because it might hurt their feelings to point out that they are a menace to our ordered society. Their victims are faceless and without a voice.
This gate owner may have been eyeing the prospect of buying a new suit. Perhaps now he will be unable to afford it. If this were so, the tailor is also a victim of this drivers inability to keep his automobile on the road.
The dislocation of resources from wealth creating activities to replacing the premature losses of property is one of the hidden and unnoticed costs of these unskilled drivers. Our whole community is poorer for it.
They are a destructive force in our midst much like a runaway fire.
We need to find ways to identify the incompetent drivers and keep them from getting behind the wheel until they can demonstrate a higher skill set before they are unleashed on the public again. Our attitude toward their behavior needs to viewed with more alarm than the present compassionate coddling.
Excellent point.
ReplyDeleteOn a related subject, I've often wondered about how death and injury rates of driving cars compares to other activities. I'm guessing we accept a lot of danger as well.
Great point about the destruction costs.
Excellent!
ReplyDeleteAdd to the costs, the huge reallocation of resources to the insurance industry... there's the cost of actual loss and the cost of fear of loss. And what about the social cost of fear of loss?
Pondero, This is an interesting piece which speaks indirectly to your question:
http://www.bicyclinglife.com/SafetySkills/SafetyQuiz.htm
I'd guess "Country Club Road" is mostly catching drunk drivers at that corner, perhaps locally known as the 19th hole. In such condition, they're incompetent at all sorts of things, not merely driving. ;-)
ReplyDeleteON THE OTHER HAND, can you be sure it wasn't two cyclists riding abreast, with really wide cruiser tires? My own bike is red, but it wasn't me. Those durn annoying cyclists!
Bring back the Scarlet Letter!
ReplyDeleteIt always scares me to see those skidmarks leading off the road. When I lived in Northern NH, it snowed non-stop November-March and I had a pretty bad accident where my car skidded off the road and I almost went flying off a bridge into a frozen river, so seeing these things in the road evokes those memories. But I agree that we do not tend to think much about the costs of repairing the damage from such accidents - including the bridge rail I rammed my car into and did not pay to have repaired.
ReplyDelete