I do not own a electric car, but when driving my Saturn VUE, anytime that I am backing up I have my driver’s window down! As I am backing up, I am yelling “Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep Beep…” Wish I could disconnect the cars security system alarm, again with the “Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep…” and somehow attach it to my transmission being shifted into reverse gear!
More people get run over by vehicles in parking lots, by vehicles backing out of parking spots, then being run over by by walking in front of a motor vehicle.
Either which way, people do not stop and look both ways when they step off the curb. Then there are those that do not cross at 90 degrees to the roadway, they cross on the diagonal, all of these pedestrian seem to all suffer from stiff necks when walking! Does not matter if it is a parking lot, or crossing a street (including the Jaywalkers who cross where there is no crossing painted across the pavement from curb-to-curb, and most of them have either Ipods or the new cellphones stuck in their ear (ears) not being able to hear any car honking its horn!
I am beginning to believe that drivers should be complimented, instead of issuing moving violation tickets, for this “THINNING OF THE NERD”, who seemed determined to remove themselves from propogating another generation of idtiots!
Then there are the joggers, that are out at O’Dark Hundred, running down the middle of the road, wearing a jogging outfit that is completely black, with no battery operated flashers to show that their is a pedistrian on the roadway! Pedistrians that are walking or jogging, folks riding bicycles in the dark with no reflectors or lights (wearing black biking clothing) where motorize vehicles are licensed to drive.
When I was a contract carrier delivering newspapers for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, I pulled around a corn onto a the route, and there in my headlights was a jogger running down the middle of the road in front of me. Iwas able to swerve the vehicle and not hit the jogger, who as I passed punched me in the face through the open drivers window of the my vehicle.
Another time I almost hit 3 men standing in the middle of the road in a area of the road with no street lights to illuminate, the men were drinking beer.
Delivering newspapers every night year round, I also get stopped by the police to see if I have been drinking. Since this when the local police department make all their money, arresting druck drivers as the bars clear out. During my 5 years as a Contract Carrier for the paper, I average 18 pull-over per year, which cause me a delay in delivering of the newspapers, while the police officer is running my driver’s license number through the computer. The police cars are the scariest thing on the road at night, they pull out of their ambush site, and pull up on your bumper, before they hit the lights and the siren! So of the officers that I met in this fashion, pulled me over numerous times in the same year… even though they know my vehicle, and that I don’t drink and drive, and I am delivering newspapers…
This is a true story from the http://www.darwinawards.com/
(12 September 2007, Florida) A woman wins two concert tickets from a local radio station. The Dave Matthews Band, live! She can’t believe her luck. She invites her friend to join her, but they are in for more than a concert experience.
Flash forward to the next morning. My buddy, head of operations at the amphitheater, looks like hell. He tells me that two women were killed the previous night at the concert. I am shocked. Nothing like this has ever happened at the amphitheater. I ask for details.
Flash back to the previous evening, 8:30pm and pouring rain. The show is delayed. Two women leave the venue to escape the rain. They pass multiple free shuttle buses that run directly to the parking lot. Instead, they opt for a shortcut across a 7-lane Interstate.
They run a hundred yards through wet grass and jump a six-foot fence that borders the road. Ahead are 3 lanes of freeway traffic, a 100’ median, and another 4 lanes of traffic. Beyond that is another six-foot fence, the maze of an ‘under construction’ garage, and a long hike around a casino.
All in all, the ‘shortcut’ to their vehicle covers a distance of half a mile. And the women are in a torrential thunderstorm. Free shuttle bus, or mad dash across dangerous territory?
My buddy was an eyewitness when the first vehicle struck the women at 8:30 pm. Oddly, this was in the first lane of traffic, on a straightaway where one can see headlights for miles in either direction. The impact hurled the women farther into traffic, and each was struck by a second car. They did not survive the collisions.
Ironically, one of the women was an “energetic and gifted athlete” who won two national championships in gymnastics. Physical prowess is no substitute for the homespun maxim: “Stop. Look. Listen. Or tomorrow you’ll be missing.”