The other Saturday, at 6:30pm, when I was taking pictures of my new windsurfing sails for a previous post, I saw my neighbor leave in his little pickup. A few minutes later I heard a horrendous crash, but it didn’t register to me as a car crash, since we have heavy equipment for logging operations nearby, although I thought it late for such activity. It wasn’t until 30 minutes later, when I heard many sirens and a helicopter that I realized there was an auto accident. I was floored to learn from the paper the next day that it was my neighbor, who apparently drank and then went for a drive; a damn shame. He went over the double yellow and plowed into a Honda Civic containing two guys. One guy is dead and another critically injured. The deceased left his little girl without a dad.
I don’t know my neighbor that well, but he seemed like a nice guy with a nice wife and he also has a young daughter. Now he’s got a ton of charges, a heavy weight on his conscience, and he’ll probably never be able to afford to send his daughter to college.
The whole thing shook me up and got me thinking of something that I’ve known for some time. Our highways are dangerous, for many reasons including; alcohol, aggressive drivers, cell phones, teen drivers, texting, and the highways and the cars themselves. We face these dangers every day. We can and should do more to fix the problem of death on the highways. Currently, we don’t do much.
We spend $40B per month on the war in Iraq, with a total expected cost of $3-Trillion ($3000000000000) because of the 911 tragedy where 3000 souls perished, but what are we doing about our highways that kill over a 42000 Americans every year? That's a staggering quarter million dead since 911 just from cars, right here in the U.S.A.! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has an annual budget of $0.815B per YEAR. What the hell!?!
We need new leadership who will address the REAL issues. Something this obvious makes me think about what other issues are left off of the radar screen by the media, like the air we breathe, the water we drink, oh and guns, which kill 29000 per year in our great nation. Dang, well there’s another 175000 killed in the U.S.A. by guns since 911. Our government must be held accountable! America needs change.
2 comments:
Right on, dude. It's crazy how we ignore real, solvable problems while obsessing over intractable, exotic threats.
That's just awful. I totally agree about the ridiculous "defense" spending here in the U.S.
Post a Comment