I was having a bit of a brain vague morning today at work, no surprises there, when for some reason I put together the thoughts of the traffic reports I hear in the morning, the road toll, and a person who used to work with my mother.
Hearing about all the three and four car accidents this morning, along with the past week of people being trapped in wreckage for an hour and a half or a truck trying to push itself into a tunnel too short for it - it got me thinking. How many of those accidents we blithely zone out when listening to radio or watching TV occur in deaths or major injuries? Or even minor physical injuries but prolonged mental ones?
I have never been in the situation of seeing or participating in a major traffic accident - it helps when you don't have a license and don't drive a car - and the most I have seen myself is when a car pranged into our front fence when I was a young teenager. The car was dented, there was glass all over the place, but no blood from memory.
While I was still in New Zealand and my family was over here in Oz, my mother, sister and my brother's girlfriend of the time aquaplaned through a standing puddle on the road, flipped two times and the car landed right side up. Was a semi-rural road in Brisbane's northern fringes - well, Caboolture, to be exact - and they didn't even hit a tree. Bruising, shock, some scarring, but no major injuries at all. Physically speaking of course, my mother has hardly ever driven since.
And then you get my mother's former workmate, from a few jobs ago now - he was just minding his own business, jogging next to the motorway, when a car flipped over and fell on him. Medically induced coma for a couple of days, a few broken bones - and some changes in his head. Where he used to be quiet as a mouse, after the accident he was loud and said inappropriate things all the time - such as sexual based stuff, if I remember what I was told correctly. Saying this to workmates who came to visit him in hospital. And he probably hasn't got right in the head since then, well, it must be about twelve years ago now. Or indeed, the rest of his life.
When you read about 300 road deaths in a year, and three times as many injuries, and hear about those constant accidents on the roads every morning, screwing up the traffic you have to get through to get to work, you forget every individual tragedy, it just becomes more statistics to ignore.
Was reading a book the other week, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, in which it is said that the highways and cars have modern gods that are kept happy by far more human sacrifices than the old gods used to get. Which is very true, surely there are hundreds of thousands that die on the roads around the world every year.
I could divert the topic a bit and say all the cars are contributing to global warming, but that could be a topic for another day. And I don't really know where I was leading with this, apart from the fact that listening to the traffic reports this morning, I stopped and actually had a good think about them and their possible consequences.
I have only mentioned injuries on the road in as much as that is more my experience than road deaths. Which are a whole other set of tragedies.
Paul
Hearing about all the three and four car accidents this morning, along with the past week of people being trapped in wreckage for an hour and a half or a truck trying to push itself into a tunnel too short for it - it got me thinking. How many of those accidents we blithely zone out when listening to radio or watching TV occur in deaths or major injuries? Or even minor physical injuries but prolonged mental ones?
I have never been in the situation of seeing or participating in a major traffic accident - it helps when you don't have a license and don't drive a car - and the most I have seen myself is when a car pranged into our front fence when I was a young teenager. The car was dented, there was glass all over the place, but no blood from memory.
While I was still in New Zealand and my family was over here in Oz, my mother, sister and my brother's girlfriend of the time aquaplaned through a standing puddle on the road, flipped two times and the car landed right side up. Was a semi-rural road in Brisbane's northern fringes - well, Caboolture, to be exact - and they didn't even hit a tree. Bruising, shock, some scarring, but no major injuries at all. Physically speaking of course, my mother has hardly ever driven since.
And then you get my mother's former workmate, from a few jobs ago now - he was just minding his own business, jogging next to the motorway, when a car flipped over and fell on him. Medically induced coma for a couple of days, a few broken bones - and some changes in his head. Where he used to be quiet as a mouse, after the accident he was loud and said inappropriate things all the time - such as sexual based stuff, if I remember what I was told correctly. Saying this to workmates who came to visit him in hospital. And he probably hasn't got right in the head since then, well, it must be about twelve years ago now. Or indeed, the rest of his life.
When you read about 300 road deaths in a year, and three times as many injuries, and hear about those constant accidents on the roads every morning, screwing up the traffic you have to get through to get to work, you forget every individual tragedy, it just becomes more statistics to ignore.
Was reading a book the other week, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, in which it is said that the highways and cars have modern gods that are kept happy by far more human sacrifices than the old gods used to get. Which is very true, surely there are hundreds of thousands that die on the roads around the world every year.
I could divert the topic a bit and say all the cars are contributing to global warming, but that could be a topic for another day. And I don't really know where I was leading with this, apart from the fact that listening to the traffic reports this morning, I stopped and actually had a good think about them and their possible consequences.
I have only mentioned injuries on the road in as much as that is more my experience than road deaths. Which are a whole other set of tragedies.
Paul
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