Alarming figures?

[vanman]

Greetings all,
I was watching the local news today and the death toll on our roads since the festive season has started, is already passed the 750 mark.25%Higher than last year.What is astonishing is the fact that the end is not in sight yet,it has just passed the halfway mark.The biggest factors mentioned is overloading,drinking,roadworthyness of vehicles and people falling asleep behind the wheel.I mean have they got no respect for other peoples lives?I just wanted to share this with you as I was really shocked when I saw this and was wondering how your respective country's are doing?

How do you guys feel about making a prayer for the people on our roads, not only for my country but worldwide??I think it could do a whole lot of good.

regards
vanmanp.s.Happy new year everyone.

[kni]

im not religious by any stretch of the imagination so a prayer wont mean much coming from me, but i do hope it settles down and people can drive safely. me and my girlfriend almost got hit on our way to where we were staying for christmas it was quite scary

[vanman]

What get's to me even more is when childrens lives are at stake.I mean they definetely do not deserve to die because of other people's disregard for the safety of the passengers the carry from one point to the other.

[zaggy]

When I drink I don't drive, I try and imagine if I killed someone, whether I knew them or not,could I ever live with myself? I know I couldn't. It is simple to not get behind a wheel of a car when drinking but all the same your perception is off when drinking. I just don't take my car because I know the tempation will be there. I will tell myself, I am not that drunk and it is just a short distance.

I hope that the holiday accidents no matter how they are caused will end. How horrible to remember the holidays by marking the death of a loved one.

[kni]

the hardest would be if you killed your passenger in the same vehicle as you, what if it was say your girlfriend and you could never see or speak to her again. killing yourself is not the worst thing i think living with the fact that you killed your mate or someone even closer takes the cake

[Chuck56]

I agree with everybody's comments. I spent over 20 years as a police officer before, thank God, wising up and retiring. It's a curious and sad thing that, of all the fatal accidents I investigated during those year, the very worst were always during the Holiday season. I, and none of us, could ever figure out why.

Drunk driving is/was a plague in my State, although something is finally being done about it. People die in automobile accidents every day. Intoxicated drivers, whether on alcohol or drugs, kill people every day. For whatever reason, though, those accidents are far more spectacular and inevitably more tragic during this time of the year. I once thought it was the quantity of the drug in the system, but even that isn't always true.

I'm all for asking a Higher Power for assistance. Mankind isn't doing the job.

[kni]

its probably got something to do with more people on the road at one time and the fact that everyone is so excited and really wanna get to where they are going. and of course more drinkers etc this time of the year

[vanman]

Greetings all,
Well I just thought I should keep you up to date on this issue since we have now topped an alltime record of 1148 deaths since the festive season has started .Where is this all going to end?

[The Old Man]

sadly, it probably will not end. The main contributing factor in crashes (i won't call them 'accidents' because they are all cause and effect) is either disrespect for others (impaired drivers, whether drink, drugs, or sleep have to get that way consciously) or an attitude of superiority (get your old car outa my BMW's way, you subspecies a$$hole, i'm in a hurry...), or momentary distraction with other traffic around (looking at the radio, picking up a fallen object, whacking a kid in the back seat, yapping on the cellphone...). Occasionally there are crashes from defective equipment in my area but not often because in order to get your annual license-plate renewed you have to have your car safety inspected.
The worst accident i ever saw with kids was on a winding 2-lane roadway where a drunk woman was sizzling down the canyon and hit a pickup full of boy scouts going up the canyon. Her momentum stopped the forward motion of the pickup and drove it 130' backwards, the topper on the truck self-destructed, the kids (12) were strained out through the openings and ended up strung out along the roadway and on the RR Tracks alongside the road.
Another bad one on that road was some jerk in a brand-new Buick that he had gone up to another state to pick up and was on his drunken way home. He hit a family head-on, killed the mom and dad in the other car and threaded the baby out through the front windshield where it hit the highway, probably dead, but got ran over by another car that could not stop. The drunk was sitting on the side of the road crying "My new car, my new car...". There were some truck drivers who stopped, and two of them had to restrain a third one from killing the drunk where he sat blubbering about his stinking new car. Then when i got there, they had to restrain me from whacking him also... or at least beating the crap out of him.
The crashes are not going to stop, as long as people are driving them in close proximity to each other. Of course, that's my pessimistic opinion, but it does not have to be true if everyone could relax and be polite. The guy who is speeding past everyone else is the same guy on down the highway who is two-inches off someone's bumper cussing for him to get off the road. And the beat goes on.

[vanman]

This whole issue got me thinking again.We had an accident just down the road from where I live and a couple of teenagers got drunk,thrown out of the holiday resort and weren't let back in.So they started racing up and down the road in front of the resort, ending up killing a innocent guy on a vespa motorcycle which happened to be coming back from the golf club.

Now I ask the question of "what happened to compulsary military service"which in my opinion did a hell of a lot for dicipline.To me these days it looks like dicipline "to be able to controll yourself" went out the window.During my military service years I was also very self centered and had an uncontrollable,mind of my own etc..This changed very soon.You either dicipline yourself and fit in, or face the consequences.Wouldn't these factors contribute to the fact that they would have been more responsible, had they been to the military, and don't get me wrong i am not saying that it is only the military that can provide you with the necessary tools to point you in the right direction but certainly one of the most efective I would say.

All I am saying is it looks like our teenagers have no regard for human life as such and something should be done about it.A great deal starts with parenting, and we can also do thins up till a certain point.You can bring a horse to the water but you can't make it drink.
How do you guys feel about this issue?