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Thursday, April 18, 2013

There Are So Few Accidents

As mentioned before I have spent a good portion of my former working years as a large vehicle trainer. I have also driven more miles than the average person, other than full time truck drivers. Since retirement I have traveled by road many times to Florida, the Florida Keys, Texas, Ontario and many other places.

During those travels, and around home where I am now, I haven’t observed an accident yet!

Collisions

On the other hand I have seen many collisions, probably needless collisions in the majority of cases. For the last week or more there have been fatality collisions near my home area and the life flight helicopters steadily busy.

Its sad to hear about collisions, and one always wonders why?

Preventable or Non-preventable

In my past training officer position I was also involved in some “accident investigation and accident reconstruction.” That’s what most called our procedures, but in reality we were looking at collisions.

Preventable collisions are ones where the question is asked, “Did the driver do everything reasonable to prevent the collision?”

That applies to both or all drivers involved, if there were more than one. It has nothing to do with the legal aspect of it. That’s for police and lawyers.

Did the driver …

Think about it.

“Did the driver do everything reasonable to prevent the collision?”

For example: Even if a driver runs a red light, the driver with the green light may be able to prevent a collision.

A non-preventable collision is in the realm of the tree suddenly falling just as you go under it and there is no way you could have known or prevented the collision. In other words they are rare.

So as I see and read about these collisions almost daily, often with the loss of lives, I say to myself out of habit.

“Did the driver do everything reasonable to prevent the collision?”

Most often the answer is “no”!