Note: This isn’t as cheerful a thing as I’d like to post, but at five in the morning it’s all I can muster.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation announced last week that roadside memorials, while an understandable expression of grief, were an unsafe distraction to drivers. They contacted the families of those who’ve died on our state’s roadways and advised them that their signs, crosses, balloons, etc., would be removed after a reasonable length of time.

These kinds of displays are already banned on interstate highways and freeways, but MnDOT said from now on the signs will be removed from rural highways after six months.

It’s true, the signs are probably distractions to drivers – people tend to slow down or at least turn their heads to get a better look. But they’re also a reminder – someone died here – of how dangerous driving is. There are myriad signs on our highways; they tell us how fast to go, when to turn, when to stop, and when not to stop. But there aren’t any road signs out there that indicate how incredibly dangerous driving is.

There are no “Drive Safely” signs hanging off of overpasses. There are no “Check You Blind Spot” warnings on freeway onramps. There are “Slippery When Wet” signs but none that say “Deadly When Not Careful”.

Maybe they should just sprinkle the highways with informational signs, every ten miles or so, that express the real nature of what it is you’re doing with yourself every time you get in the car. Close to 600 people die on the roads in Minnesota every year. That’s almost two a day. In 2003, car crashes were the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 1 and 33. The highest number of crashes last year occurred from 4pm to 8pm. Rush hour; you’re in it every day.

Why are the roads so dangerous? Well, there’s one obvious culprit; alcohol. It accounts for about 30% of the deaths in Minnesota (in which at least one of the drivers had been drinking). I don’t think you need a sign to make clear that if you drive a car while drunk, you’re going to make deadly mistakes. But what about the other 70%?

Twenty-one percent of the people killed in 2002 in Minnesota were in crashes where driver inattention was cited as a cause. That’s 137 highway memorials that can be attributed to someone not paying attention. And I think that stems from an ingrained problem with drivers today; people forget that cars are dangerous.

You see them everywhere – doing their makeup, brushing their teeth, filling out paperwork, or just driving along obliviously as if their car were on rails and surrounded by an impenetrable wall. You’ve probably done it, too. I have. It’s easy to forget that you’re riding along at 60 mph in a thinly-masked explosive device, because cars are comfortable. They have accessories (stereos, air-conditioning, vanity mirrors, heated seats). They aren’t hard to use; you tap a pedal to speed up, you tap a pedal to slow down, you turn the wheel. No cranking or pushing or waiting.

So it’s easy to start thinking about cars as extensions of our bodies; like a faster form of walking. You don’t concern yourself too much about safety if you’re just walking down the street; why should you if you’re just driving down the highway? It’s not that people don’t know cars are dangerous; everyone knows that. People wear their seatbelts. But knowing they’re dangerous and recognizing that every moment in a car you’re seconds away from being dead are very different things.

I’m not saying everyone needs to freak out and ride bicycles to work. Bikes can be dangerous too, you know. For that matter, walking isn’t that safe, either. But biking and walking are to driving like slingshots and swords are to guns. You can hurt yourself with a slingshot if you’re not careful, but I’d like to see you try to kill yourself with one (OK, not really, but it’s funny to think about).

With a gun, a very small mistake can lead to very dire consequences. It’s the same in a car. I doubt people would try to operate a handgun while at the same time shaving and talking on the phone, because guns are guns, and they’re for killin’. But cars aren’t viewed that way, and that’s a problem.

So as MnDOT starts pulling down memorials over the next few months, maybe they should start putting up other signs in their places. For each memorial, for each spot where somebody died in a car crash, they should place signs that read, simply, “PAY ATTENTION.”

Statistics in this post come from: The Minnestoa Office of Traffic Safety .

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2004 at 6:05 am and is filed under Minnesota, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.