Editor:
Most people purchase lottery tickets, hoping that maybe some day they will win big or strike it rich. I admit I don’t spend too much on any form of recreational gambling.
But I did win a lottery, a lottery of life. I won mine. My wife Mary and I walk every morning before breakfast. A possibly distracted mature driver with a child unexpectedly reversed at speed, out of a driveway, and for the sake of a miracle we survived without injury.
I think backing into traffic lanes is both dangerous and down right stupid, but not looking and driving in reverse, coupled with speed, is ridiculous. I startled the driver as the person turned to look down the road and unexpectedly discovered me beside the driver’s side window.
With my wife a pace or two ahead of me, as both of us had assumed the driver was in control, the vehicle unexpectedly came flying backwards and did not stop or slow down until the back wheels hit the frozen snow bank on our walking side of the road, where a millisecond earlier I had jumped clear. Close enough for the back of the pickup box to actually make contact with my right jacket sleeve, I very likely would have had some extremely serious injuries trapped underneath the back of that pickup and the two-foot high frozen snow bank. Daily this road has school children walking. If adults aren’t visible, how hard would it be to see little children, especially on the driver’s driveway side of the road where the snow banks are up to four feet high, let alone other traffic on the road?
At any time of the year when reversing out of a driveway, visibility is limited. Bicyclists, children chasing a ball, skateboarders, rollerbladers and in winter-high snow banks, do we really need to kill or maim to become a responsible driver? Drivers licenses are issued on the basis that we will be in control of our vehicle at all times. Every one of us possibly thinks that the captain of a recent cruise liner sinking is or was negligent.
How different are we, if we are not responsibly in control of our vehicles?
Doug Wilson
Williams Lake