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Distracted Driving : Physics from toads |
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J.C.
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Distracted Driving : Physics from toads |
"We thot you was a toad!"
That had to be my favorite line from the recent hit movie, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" I finally got around to seeing it over the weekend – after many months of enjoying Ralph Stanley’s fine picking and "high lonesome sound" that scores part of it.
Better late than never, I reckon.
The bizarre story line was tolerable only because the music was so worthwhile. And it’s popularity on the country, and even the crossover, charts got me to wonderin’ if Bluegrass was going to make a comeback like it did after the movie "Deliverance" propelled a catchy little tune called "Dueling Banjos" to the top of the charts 30 years ago (has it been that long?)
Likewise, I wondered, would George Clooney and his celluloid Soggy Bottom Boys propel Bluegrass back to its once trendy and lofty heights with their dubbed rendition of "I am a Man of Constant Sorrow?" Actually performed by Dan Tyminski and the real Soggy Bottom Boys, by the way.
And if it did, would there be countless scores of unknown Bluegrass musicians out there who would, like me, get relentlessly hounded by the uninitiated to play one tune until even the mere mention of its title was enough to make them start convulsing in disgust?
Yes! I’ll admit it! My name is John, I play a banjo (a five-stringed Gibson RB-250 Mastertone, to be exact) and I HATE DUELING BANJOS.
What’s that got to do with driving? Nothing. Which is precisely the point.
A lot of what drivers are doing out on Rt. 235 every morning on their way here has precious little to do with driving, either.
"Most of the accidents on station are due to lapses in attention," Pax River Police Chief Col. Tom Dougherty told me the other day. "Cell phones, smoking, correcting kids in the back seat – some people can balance a steering wheel and a cheeseburger, but they need to pay attention to what’s going on."
In addition to Dougherty’s list, Pax Police have also seen motorists putting on makeup, combing hair, reading newspapers (!) even in construction zones! So it’s little wonder there were 224 motor vehicle accidents on station last year.
If your thoughts wander to the Blue Ridge while navigating your way to NAVAIR in the morning, instead of Weissberg’s spirited rendition of that hated tune you might get to enjoy a little harp music – assuming, of course, you’re headed in that direction when your call to Glory comes.
But 224 accidents… that’s a lot of lost income, lost productivity and lost effectiveness due to a little avoidable attention span deficiency.
Aviators are trained to compartmentalize – to focus so squarely on the task at hand, so other distractions can’t creep in and kill them. We should do no less while engaged in the single most dangerous activity we perform at least twice a workday – driving.
Drive time is exactly that – time to drive. Because we’ve been doing it since we were teens, it’s almost second nature to us. It even becomes something we take for granted and become complacent about performing.
Think about it, though – you are operating a mostly steel machine that weighs, on average, at least 7,000 pounds at about 50 mph (okay, 80 mph if you come down Rt 235).
I’m no engineer, but I figure that’s a LOT of kinetic energy. Do you know anything about Newton’s Second Law of Motion? Well, if you’re cruising down Rt 235 at the speed of heat and get distracted by the coffee you just spilled in your lap because you hit a bump while dialing your cell phone, you’re going to get a crash course in F=MA (pun intended).
Let’s see … 7,000 lbs negatively accelerating from 50 mph to zero in three feet (about how much your vehicle will be reduced by impacting a bridge abutment, oncoming 18-wheeler or other such object) is a lot of force.
The human body is not designed to withstand such force. At least mine isn’t. Remember Pete in "O Brother" when, in toad form, he had his encounter with the tree?
So drive time, then, demands our utmost attention if we are to keep those forces from getting out of hand. Coffee (Yes, I’m guilty), primping, breakfast and the morning paper should all be taken care of before we mount our engines of death for the daily joust with the Black Knight.
With so much force capable of so much destruction under our control (hopefully…), can we afford not to give its operation our undivided attention? Sure, you might have your vehicle under control, but what about the other guy? Does he?
Don’t find out the hard way. Pay attention to your driving and let’s all stay on the Sunny Side of Life.
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