an expert Witness BY JAMES E. LEWIS ///
Is your Pride getting in the way of
D
SAFE DRIVING?
isclaimer: I’m as American as they come, from a family of veterans and Irish immigrants, even have a US Flag tattooed on my arm – but we as Americans have too much confidence in our driving abilities. I’m certainly not dogging Americans in general – examples like those people in Germany, though, easily outshine us in training and ability when it comes to driving. In fact, if you look at some of our habits and our staggering crash statistics, we’re not much better than most Third World countries when it comes to driving safely. This placement in the world comes from one primary source – ego. The typical American driver always thinks
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Tow Professional | Volume 10 • Issue 3
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they’re the best and everyone else on the road is the problem, which causes them to be overly confident and outdrive their abilities. Let’s also establish some language. There’s no such thing, when it comes to driving, as an “accident.” Let’s call them what they are – crashes, wrecks, or perhaps the more politically correct “incidents.” If these crashes were truly accidents, we wouldn’t see attorneys in wall-to-wall commercials on television advertising getting you millions for your wreck, especially if it involves an 18-wheeler. Plaintiff’s attorneys make millions off of wrecks...think about it...if they were accidents, there would be no
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one to blame. And there’s always someone to blame. I’ll set that line of thought aside for a moment and get back to training, confidence, and ego. Long gone are the days of mandatory driver’s education. That class that every teenager looked forward to usually between their freshman and sophomore years in high school. I know one of my football coaches gave us the class as we watched films like “Highway Terror” and saw carnage on the roadways. We then took turns driving the car with the coach in the front seat, and then we were off to get our license. Some private companies offer driver’s education, but it is usually
