Fear in traffic- triggering alert

[just me here]

Today I was on the road with my wife driving, as we passed a recently closed business she told me that the reason it was going under was because the owners wife had been convicted of vehicular homicide, while DUI, with 6 prior convictions for DUI before she finally killed someone.

I found myself about 10 miles down the road not remembering anything that had happened after she shared that news with me, I was lost in a vision of all of the accident scenes and drunks on stretchers and victims in bags and cars crossing the line at me on saturday nights and the darkness that envelopes you after an accident that is such a shock after you were just cruising along with your music and your heater and your comfortable seat and your well lit world rolling along behind your headlights.

I have been out to lunch on and off all day long, dropping back into the world of the car accidents I have been in and responded to as an EMT.

This is a time in the history of man that we will find to be embarrassing some fine day yet to come. This is the time that we all lived with the danger of the drunk driver as an accepted part of life. These are the days that we could be killed by someone that has been convicted of DUI 6 times but had a drivers license, insurance, the ability to buy gasoline and alcohol and to get behind the wheel and end your life. It happens everyday, we all know someone that was affected in some way by it, we all know we could be next just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It makes me want to cry. It makes me feel like I am going to throw up. It gets in my head and grabs my brain and shakes it like I am supposed to wake up and do something about it. It takes my day away from me if I look at it for ten minutes, every day that I do it.

my god, if I stood on a corner with an unloaded handgun hanging at my side the 911 call center would be ringing off the hook with people calling in the "man with a gun" because I might launch a 158 grain bullet at a few thousand feet per second, affecting anyone or anything that got in the way of it's fairly short .357 diameter path.

But a known drunk driver leaving a tavern full of people and getting in a car and driving away happens all the time and no one calls until there is an accident. They head out in their thousands of pounds vehicle at 60 miles per hour and endanger anything in front of their 6 foot wide four foot high miles long path.

I just can't get my head around it. We are all like cattle out there, wondering if this trip goes to the store and back or to the ER and the morgue. I am baffled.

How do you cope with it or do you even think about it? How should I try to change my thoughts and regain my confidence in traffic? how do I drop these thoughts when they grab me up?

 

[Privateer]

Wait...people convicted of drunk driving over there still get to drive?

Drunk driving here carries an automatic 12 month driving ban, not that the kind of scumbag who drives drunk pays much attention to a ban, I suppose, but driving while disqualified carries penalties of its own.

Personally, I just try not to think about other drivers. Not just the drunk ones, but all of them. I got my pilot's licence before I got my driving licence and was horrified by how easy it is to be considered 'qualified' to operate a car.

Hmm. That's not very helpful, is it?

Sorry.

 

[maddog]

I think when you are constantly confronted by the tragedies and horrors of the world, it's very easy to become preoccupied by them and to somehow view the world through the dark lens of all that you have been forced to endure. Professions of law enforcement, emergency response, emergency medicine etc, are all prone to this somewhat distorted view.

Investigate enough rapes or child abuse complaints and you come to believe that the world is full of abusive predators who victimise the vulnerable. Treat enough accident victims and you come to believe that the world is full of wreckless irresponsible vehicular lunatics. Lock up enough fraudsters and you come to believe that humanity is to never be trusted.

I think that the best you can do is to try to step out of your trauma whenever possible and take a look at what is really happening in the world around you. Take a look at all of the cars and their drivers on the road around you. The overwhelming majority are driving safely, responsibly and will reach their destination without incident. The proportion of those who won't is negligibly small, and every time you make a safe trip, or talk to someone who has just made a safe trip, or watch a stranger making a safe trip, you are encountering evidence that for the most part, driving is a moderately safe passtime undertaken by a mostly responsible cohort of human beings.

It's hard, no doubt, but pushing yourself to reality check your beliefs and assumptions about the world is critical in not falling victim to your own experiences. Yes, there are a lot of horrible people in the world. Sadly, those of us who are on this forum are likely to have experienced that firsthand more frequently and more intensely than the bulk of the population. But there are also good and safe people, and they far outnumber the former type.

Maddog

 

[DharmaGirl]

I'm a nurse and I have several patients that I bring up like that. I find it helps to write down the story with pen and paper, then write down how I feel about it. After many, many times it fades.

 

[just me here]

Wait...people convicted of drunk driving over there still get to drive?

Drunk driving here carries an automatic 12 month driving ban, not that the kind of scumbag who drives drunk pays much attention to a ban, I suppose, but driving while disqualified carries penalties of its own.

Yeah, you can drive yourself home from the jail the next morning in some cases. There is also diversion, where a dui can be minimized by doing public service. Anyway around it is an expensive arrest and it will cost you much for many years of higher insurance rates and the like but it is doable. My wife was hit by a doctor that had been convicted eight times, a friend was run over while sitting at a light on his bike by a guy that had collected one just a week before and my mail delivery lady was sitting in stop and go traffic and killed by a non licensed non insured non registered vehicle driven by a drunk that wasn't a legal citizen with prior drunk in public arrests, first time dui tho.

there is no comfort in counting the safe trips and although the fact is most trips are perfectly safe, any one of them can be the last one. They say you are more likely to be killed in a car accident on your way to get a lottery ticket than you are to win the lottery- how can I make that applicable when I don't play the lottery? The real problem for me is that I have heard so many people say that they never thought it would happen to them, why did this happen to me? how come I am the unlucky one? what did I do to deserve this? I was just minding my own business and.....

I can't say that. I am expecting it, and when it happens there will be no "why me?" I will be a victim because we allow people to be victims. We need but will not pay for bigger jails, more police, better roads. We turn and look the other way when some one is drunk in public, no one calls 911 for a red light runner or tailgater or speeder or dangerous passer, the dispatcher would hang up on you. I know why it happens and if it happens to me I won't bother asking anyone why.