Update: AD Lays His Bike Down
Sunday, July 27th, 2008Awhile back, I linked to Ambulance Driver’s bad day, in which he has a motorcycle accident.
Today he put up the full story.
In essence, a driver made a left turn in front of him, despite his due-diligence efforts to announce his oncoming presence at the intersection. She wasn’t drunk, wasn’t using a cell phone, had a perfect driving record, “Up till now”, as AD says.
She just didn’t see him.
I’m going to emphasize: any of us, at any time, could do something like this. We see what we expect to see. Our brains basically mock up well over half of our visual field at any given instant. The vision system was not evolved to work at highway speeds. This time a motorcycle happened to be in a blind spot, but it could have been a pedestrian, or an SUV.
Friend Pat is a bike rider (she’s even been a racer).
And I’ll say it again: the things that make life worth living are the things that can also hurt us the most, even kill us. You want to talk about a serious risk of heartache, try having kids. I’m only an uncle, and nothing like this has happened to any of the kids in my life–but enough to know that if you want a pain-free life, don’t have kids, and don’t let anyone you know have kids.
Fuck that shit. Fuck that shit till its ears bleed.
Safety is an illusion.
Go out, live your life, do the things that give you joy. Sooner or later, though, no matter how careful you are, either you’ll make a mistake, someone else will, or sheer random chance will confound you. Even if you just lie in bed, quaking with fear, eventually your heart will blow out.
Live your life, and extract as much joy out of it as you can, doing whatever it takes.
I’m gonna be extra careful at intersections for a while, though.