Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

A few of us were talking over coffee the other day about driving, what we were comfortable with and what bothered us about it.

Most of us decided we didn’t like driving much at night, preferred to avoid snow storms and that there were a huge number of idiots driving vehicles on the road.

Most of us have been driving 50 to 60 years or more. It occurred to me later that some of that uneasiness is because we have driven for so many miles. It isn’t that we are getting worse, it is that we have seen so much that we are aware of so many bad things that might happen under certain circumstances.

Recently Mary and I were in St. Cloud. It was dark because we were attending an evening concert that our grandson Colin was playing in. As we went down Division Street a car was tailgating me so closely I could barely see his headlights out the rear view mirror. That means the driver was probably less than a car length behind.

All I could think of was that I hoped the car ahead of me didn’t have to stop quickly. If that driver did, I would hit the brakes and that car behind me would smash in my rear end and probably push me into the rear of the car ahead of me. I was ready to get off at the next street when he got off and drove away.

Most of us look not once but twice when we pull out onto a street just to make sure we don’t pull out right in front of someone. Why? We’ve seen so many close calls. Sometimes it is hard to judge a coming car’s speed so that second look is a double check.

I’m pretty careful when I get on ice. Sixty years ago I was a passenger in a car, a Renault Dauphine, which was France’s answer to the VW with its rear engine. We got to an icy spot and the crosswind started moving the car’s very light front end toward the ditch. There was nothing the driver, a high school friend, could do.

We hit the snow bank by the median in the 4-lane highway and started rolling over finally coming to a stop on the edge of the roadway coming the opposite way. We had our seatbelts on and walked away from the totaled car.

An interesting sidelight is that some passersby stopped to check on us and helped up flip the car back onto its wheels. It was undriveable, the wheels were all messed up. Believe it or not, there was a junk yard just across the road so we pushed it across the road and sold it. A state trooper gave us a ride into town and we took a bus to continue our journey.

Mary and I had a close call 23 years ago. We were leaving a small Iowa town on a two lane highway and a semi coming from the other direction stopped to let us by so he could make a left hand turn across our lane onto a street.

The driver and I had eye contact so I knew he saw me so I proceeded ahead. But someone behind the semi got impatient and pulled out into our lane before we got to the end of the truck. We avoided a head on crash but he hit our driver’s side front wheel which sent us off into the ditch where we rolled several times before landing on our wheels.

Again the vehicle was totalled but other than some glass fragments in our faces we were OK after an ambulance ride and some imaginative glass removal techniques in the ER (duct tape). We had our seatbelts on. Another situation to be wary of in the future.

Car wrecks are scary events but many drivers may not realize all the situations that can put them in a wreck, even one which may not be their fault. But a wreck is a wreck, cars get damaged, people get hurt and sometimes killed and then there is the hassle of getting a vehicle fixed or replaced, the possibility of traffic tickets and boosted insurance rates and more.

So as we get older we learn that we not only have to avoid making mistakes of our own, we have to learn to avoid other people’s mistakes.

Being right isn’t always enough!