>This is one of those things that you say will "never happen to me". My
>prayers and sympathies are with all the families and churches in that area.
This is one of those things that I almost always have in my mind when I'm
driving--especially the church van. By maintaining an attitude of "that
driver over there won't stop at the intersection" or "the brakes may fail
at any time" can prevent a lot of accidents. I'm not talking about an
attitude of FEAR or DEFEATISM, but being READY! Pilots are trained in
emergency procedures all the time. Ever heard of a similator session where
an engine didn't fail at some inopportune moment? Sometimes, we get pretty
lazy and pop the cruise control on, rest our leg over to the passenger
side, get involved with a conversation behind us, take our seatbelts off...
We should use this tragedy as a wakeup call. I'm not saying that this
driver was at fault, as we all know that some things do happen beyond our
control, and we all know that 15 passenger vans (fully loaded) are barely
controllable under the best of conditions. Blow a tire at 65 mph in a
fully loaded van and it becomes potentially an extremely deadly situation.
What I am saying is that we as drivers have an awesome responsibility to
protect the lives of our passengers. Get-there-itus is a dangerous thing,
and habits that we form while commuting in our cars (like eating, cranking
the stereo, etc) have no place in the driver's seat of the church van/bus.
Ken Norton
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