Читать книгу The Driving Challenge: Dare to Be Safer and Happier on the Road - Phil Berardelli - Страница 4

Every time I drive, I use all of the techniques I recommend in this book. I’m not perfect at it, of course. Sometimes I slip up. Once in a while I become impatient or irritated—just a little, enough to make an out-loud comment or two about the traffic snarl that has captured me or about what somebody nearby is doing.

Or, sometimes I neglect to look in all directions before making a move, and suddenly I find there’s another vehicle in a space I had assumed was empty—a vehicle occupied by a driver who’s now making an out-loud comment about me.

Or, every so often, I notice that my speed has climbed above the limit.

I mention these things as a way of pointing out that I’m just like everybody else: human and fallible. I make plenty of mistakes. I just don’t want you to think that you’re about to read a book written by someone with a holier-than-thou attitude. That’s not what it’s about—casting blame and pointing fingers, index or otherwise. The roads are full of such behavior already, as is much of modern life.

It’s a dangerous and angry environment out there, and I don’t want to add to it. Instead, I want to talk as straightforwardly as I can about a problem that affects us all. I want to show you that the best way to address this problem is for each of us to try harder to get along as we share the roads, because what each of us does either helps or makes things worse.

So I want to begin with an honest attempt to describe the realities of today’s highways. I want to talk frankly—and sometimes bluntly—about driving, and I want you to do the same with yourself. That’s the only way to approach such a serious subject.

In that vein, I have a confession to make:

I’ve been driving a long time, even before I obtained my license in 1964. I grew up in rural western Pennsylvania, where there were plenty of opportunities to drive at a young age that didn’t involve breaking the law. Many young men like me accumulated early time behind the wheel on privately owned dirt roads and over fields on vast farm acreage. We drove tractors and pick-up trucks as well as cars. One of my boyhood friends even became adept at handling a bulldozer before he was 17.

Also, like many young men of any generation, once I got my license I drove hard much of the time—as fast as I could get away with. Sometimes my behavior was utterly stupid, but I was lucky, unlike three of my friends, who died in crashes only a few years after high school. I never caused a crash, although I did have several, minor, one-vehicle scrapes and a few more narrow escapes. Over the years, I received nine traffic tickets—all deserved. Four were for speeding, three were for running red lights or stop signs, and two were for making illegal U-turns. One of the speeding tickets resulted in my license being suspended for 90 days.

In other words, my driving history has been quite flawed. During more of my adult life than I’d like to admit, I drove the way many people do—especially when I was alone. For me, as for many others, the sight of vehicles clogging the road ahead was tremendously frustrating. When traffic was heavy, I would push and snake as much as I could to get past everyone in front of me, always trying to achieve my goal: a place where the road ahead was clear. The problem was that such a place almost never appeared, and if it did it was short-lived. There always seemed to be other vehicles blocking my way, interfering with my chosen speed. Little did I know that the way to an open road required taking an opposite tack.

I also spent time in the fast lane with a close friend who owned a turbocharged, 1987 Thunderbird. A couple of times a year we’d tour the countryside, taking turns behind the wheel, trying to impress each other with our finely honed skills and lightning reflexes. We loved tooling down winding, barely traveled country roads. They were perfect places, we thought, for wringing out that sleek, black T-Bird.

We survived all of those escapades, but I’m not proud of my behavior. Suffice it to say, I’m glad I managed to avoid harming myself or anyone else. I mention this only to explain that my transition to safety and responsibility was not, thank heaven, the result of a tragedy. It was a gradual process—though I do recall one incident that represented the beginning of my conversion.

It was late-fall 1990. I was headed east on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, near the Bedford Interchange, in the middle of a heavy downpour on a cold, Sunday afternoon. I was driving my 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass sedan, a yacht of a car, with 16-inch wheels and a massive steel frame. It had a pair of white vinyl bucket seats that swiveled to let you sit and exit more easily, flanked by two heavy doors more than four feet wide. They were difficult to open if the car was parked uphill, and they were equally difficult to hang onto if it was parked downhill. In fact, the doors were part of the reason I ended up with the Olds.

The car had belonged to my aunt, who had driven it so sparingly over 12 years that when she died in 1988 the odometer still hadn’t clicked off 30,000 miles. She left the Olds to my mother, who drove it only a few months before offering it to me. Mom was intimidated by the car’s size and power, and she was having difficulty with those doors.

For me, who had been driving sensible—although in my perception underpowered—Volvo station wagons for the previous 15 years, the Olds was a liberating experience. It felt like a return to the good old days of American cars, with its vast expanses of sheet metal, physically huge powerplant, and disregard of fuel economy. I quickly got into the habit of flooring the accelerator and feeling the engine’s 300-horsepower surge from the deluge of gasoline into the 4-barrel carburetor. I particularly liked to cruise the interstates and expressways, 15 miles an hour or so above the speed limit, passing slower vehicles with disdain, and keeping a wary eye open for patrol cars. I liked to think I owned the left lane.

As much as I hated being confined behind other vehicles, I especially hated being passed. Often, when that would happen, I’d increase my speed and close the gap behind the offender. I wouldn’t tailgate or deliberately provoke anyone, but I would begin to play an imaginary game of tag. The other vehicle became my target, and I’d make it my goal to overtake it and put it far behind in my rearview mirror.

I never worried about the dangers, because I always believed I could react quickly enough to avoid trouble.

So it was, that rainy afternoon in heavy traffic. I had begun a challenge on the Turnpike some miles back with a Pontiac Firebird. It passed me, so I caught and passed it. It passed me again and I maneuvered back and forth between the lanes and overtook it. Within a short time our unofficial dueling became more and more daring—because the other driver had joined the game. We drove faster and faster, snaking through the traffic. It had become a clear case of two adults acting increasingly stupid and juvenile—dangerously so.

That’s when a rush of cold and serious thoughts finally entered my stubborn head.

I can’t say I experienced some sort of epiphany, or that I narrowly escaped a disastrous situation that terrified me into reforming. It wasn’t so dramatic. I simply and painfully became confronted with a strong sense of my own foolishness. At that moment I realized my opponent and I were endangering everyone around us for no good reason. Worse, we were depending on the consistency and predictability of the very people we were endangering. If anyone nearby had made a sudden, unexpected stop or move, there was no way either of us could have avoided a collision.

For once, my sense of overconfidence evaporated. At last I grasped that I was traveling too fast to react, within a convoy of dense traffic, along a stretch of road with narrow shoulders, atop wet pavement. The other driver and I had created a situation that left no room for error. The slightest mistake could have resulted in a terrible crash that would have been both our faults and—assuming we survived—haunted us for the rest of our lives.

Maybe it was an epiphany, because it caused me to do something rare up to that point: I eased back on the gas pedal, dropped my speed, and slipped into the general traffic flow. The Firebird quickly disappeared ahead. Game over.

The remainder of the trip, back to my home in Northern Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., I stayed under the speed limit. I also kept thinking about what had occurred. It really troubled me. I felt ashamed of myself. I’m a nice guy, I thought. I wouldn’t try to harm anyone deliberately. What’s wrong with me? What was so important about staying ahead of that other driver, and why did I push myself so close to the edge? How could I possibly have lived with myself if I had caused an injury or death?

My search for answers was the start of my conversion. I began to understand that I couldn’t tolerate such immature behavior in myself any longer. I had escaped the worst, but only by sheer good fortune. Now it would be up to me to stay out of trouble. So I resolved to avoid doing such stupid things again.

On the whole, I’ve kept that promise to myself. I’ve come to realize that being smart about driving is a lot better than being lucky. I’ve also spent a great deal of time observing—and thinking and writing about—the ways we behave behind the wheel. The process has allowed me to develop a different style of driving, one I am convinced can keep everyone safer on the road.

Now for the disclosure:

I have selfish reasons for writing this book. I worry about my loved ones and friends when they’re out on the highways. I worry about their safety all the time, because our highways are harsh and dangerous places. I figure if there’s anything I can do to make things safer for everyone, then I can help protect the people I care most about. And if I can persuade you to think the same way, then maybe fewer people will have to suffer the tragedies that infect our highways so thoroughly.

As you read further, keep that possibility in mind.