If you could go back in time
We’ve all done things in our past that we wish he hadn’t. As a kid, we did things because of peer pressure or because we were in a hurry. Seconds or minutes later, we could have kicked ourselves because of what happened. Haven’t you had moments like that as a kid? Have you ever had moments like that while driving?
Recently in the news was a story of how a driver was run over in her driveway by her family van. Now, we’ve heard of kids being backed over by a family member leaving their driveway, but this story is slightly different. She backed over herself. It’s true, but how could this happen?
Once the driver regained consciousness in hospital, she told the local police what happened. After backing her vehicle out of the garage, she decided to get out of the vehicle and close the garage door. She put the parking brake on, but left the vehicle in reverse. Umm, how much time would it have taken her to select park before she exited the vehicle? Yeah, I thought so too.
The two seconds that she was trying to save almost cost this driver her life. It was reported that she did have life threatening injuries once she was taken to hospital, but that has been reduced now. We’re all thankful that she survived this incident, but maybe that will be a lesson to her and to other drivers as well.
As a judge during the third season of Canada’s Worst Driver on Discovery Network, I watched a participant get his vehicle stuck on an object during a driving challenge. With his brother in the passenger seat and the vehicle still in drive, he got out of the vehicle to remove the object from in front of the wheel. He never thought about putting the vehicle into park. Luckily, the vehicle didn’t run over him. It got stuck on another object a couple of metres away and stopped once again.
Take the time to do things properly. As my dad always told me as a kid; if you’re going to do something, do it right the first time. Good advice like that can certainly help you avoid running over yourself… with your own vehicle!
I had to read it to believe it. You may want to add use Neutral with brake for a Standard, but people that drive them are unlikely to be this careless. Automatics only mean gear selection, they don’t wait for motorists that leave if they are in a gear.
This is the boneheaded move about what people shouldn’t do which we all do now and then, though usually not as serious.
But it’s a PERFECT time to bring up the backing up thing. NO ONE should back out of their driveway. That’s how we run over our own kids, pets, bikes, et al. In fact, we don’t have as good a view of the road. People die because we back onto the road right in front of them. It happens regularly. If you want, I’ll list news accounts of them.
Why do people choose to back out of the driveway? Because it’s so much easier to drive straight in instead of backing in. But backing into our driveway or garage is much safer than backing out. We’re substituting easy for safe and it costs us lives.
* A quick note for your proofreader. Third line down…
Haven’t you have -could be changed to- Haven’t you had…
Thanks for the comment Doug. I’ve written about backing before; both with a driveway and in a parking lot. Backing out into traffic is always dangerous. Also, thanks for the “typo” comment.