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Saturday, March 6, 2010

My 60mph Death Machine

I've been a licensed driver for a little more than a year, but add in the years I've been driving with my permit and I've been driving for approximately four years. In those four years I have never been in accident, my fault or otherwise, except while I was in another person's vehicle and I was not driving. Although I have flashbacks on those accidents, neither of the two resulted in any injuries, that is not what prompted me to write this blog entry. It is solely me coming to realization that we are lunatics to think that we can control our lives while we put ourselves in metal boxes and hurl ourselves forward at speeds of 60 miles per hour (mph) or faster as a means of transportation.

Does anyone know what powered steering is? Electrically assisted artificial wheel/axis manipulation. Without powered steering, a vehicle is virtually impossible to control. Yes, you can still drive, but it's extremely difficult and at that point your ability to control the vehicle is limited to how strong you are versus the vehicle momentum at any given time. If your brakes fail while driving at any speed above 15 mph, you cannot stop without hitting something. That's right folks, you have to hit a car, tree, snow bank, or some other object that will slow down the vehicle enough to make it stop. We know this, in our subconscious, but our need for being able to get from place to place seems to allow us to throw aside our basic survival instincts.

The most psychotic part of this is that we put ourselves on the road with hundreds of other vehicles, entrusting our own safety in the hands of other people who may not have the same common sense that we do. Of course, this is assuming we have common sense. A lot of drivers aren't content to follow the rules of the road, particularly speed limits, and so we drive faster than what the law says we can drive. I myself am extremely impatient in getting to and from places even if I'm not running late and usually drive at least five miles over the speed limit. What scares me to death is the fact that I am not the fastest vehicle on the road. In fact, even going just five miles over, I find myself having to stay in the right lane of traffic to let the faster vehicles pass me by... That means that there are numerous vehicles propelled by explosive materials at 80 mph or faster just so they can get from one place to another a few minutes faster.

This reminds me, does anyone ever take a second to think about the fact that our vehicles are propelled by controlled explosions? Yeah, they're controlled, but they're explosions nonetheless! I know I'm starting to sound like a paranoid dweeb; the kind that locks himself away in the closet, too scared of every little thing to go out and enjoy life. I can guarantee that I'm not paranoid, just examining the our suicidal tendencies. Oh, and get this, when we lose control of our vehicle and hit another car or person, it's called an accident. An accident. What is a more appropriate term if accident is unacceptable, you ask? How about calculated and accepted rate of fatalities due to predicted likelihood that driving a vehicle will result in lethal casualties.

People, wake up! The government calculates and can know with reasonable certainty how many people will die every year due to car related incidents (this is excluding incidents where a driver was intoxicated in some way.) Governments around the world knows these statistics and have decided that the loss of life from these tragic mishaps is an ACCEPTABLE LOSS. That's right, if you get into a car accident and die, the government considers your death tragic, but acceptable and will not do anything to stop more people death. It isn't until there is a dramatic increase of deaths, to the point that the media starts reporting it, that the government will even flinch at the body count.

Just more proof that Government doesn't care about you. You are an insignificant numerical phenomena of no consequence. Your individuality has no meaning. You are meaningless to the Government. Yet, you pay the tab that the Government runs up. You elect the fat cats that run the Government. You pick up guns and kill other people to defend the Government. You even sing songs of your unwavering loyalty to the Government. Oh sure, you can say that your patriotism is towards democracy, to the Republic, but even now there is probably someone reading this who has labeled me a dissenter and an anarchist. I don't care what they label me, but the fact that I'm being labeled such for being critical of my government is proof that loyalty to the nation must exclusively be to the government, or else...

I am a servant to the ideals that my country was founded: freedom. Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. As it stands, a republic, or a representative democracy governed by a constitution is the most stable way of maintaining those ideals. Unfortunately, we've allowed ourselves to sacrifice our personal freedoms to ensure our security. The truth is, we're no more secure than we were before, in fact because we have surrendered our freedoms we now have internal threats that are just as dangerous as the ones from the outside. The government should fear its people, not the other way around.

The government doesn't give a rats-ass about you, and if you think otherwise, then I'd say you are ignorant to your own insignificance in the eyes of the government. They don't care that every time you put yourself into a car you are literally putting your neck in a noose and playing chicken with the release lever.

Until next time,
De Facto

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