Metal Beasts of The Paved Path

Recently a good friend of mine was in the situation of driving way under the influence, and as all bad stories go, he got into the accident. Crashed alongside a road divider at a high speed, and while him and his passenger were unscathed, thank the gods for that, the car though was another story. Yes, this is a sequence of bad decisions all adding up for an explosive conclusion, but the morality of the story is another issue. This event just got me thinking about something a little more general.

Automobiles ain't nothing to fuck with.

I'm not talking about Transformers, but the actually Carl Benz invention. Just think about their weight, one to two tons of steel that can travel up to speeds that things of that size should not be able to go. It moves along roads that get inches near pedestrians and just other pieces of property. Also the amount of power, or effort, it takes to put these massive machines into motion, is so minimal, sometimes we forget what they are capable of.  Also all it takes one malfunction within the dozens of parts that makes up the machine, for a situation to get a hairy. Or one judgment call.

It is terrible that our lives nowadays rely on them so much, and don't even get me started on the Fossil Fuel standards that car makers have been skewing for years so their comrades in the oil industry can be happy men. It is a vicious circle. Also the environmental impacts, heartbreaking~

It's the worse in the United States, where land has never been an issue, there is plenty of it in the mainland, as people staked their grounds as wide as the eye can see. Look at San Diego, where the suburbia there is sprawled out for miles. Unless you are in a metropolitan area that needs a public transportation to function, you have to gas up and shut up. So reliant on it for work and just personal needs, it is just how our lives are mapped out nowadays.

So recently I have been just noticing the cars around me a lot of more, and just being a defensive driver. Consciously I noticed this a few days ago, but maybe just hearing about what happened to my friend, it just got me putting my guard up driving around. I know these cautionary thoughts will slowly dissipate, and I will go back to being the careful driver I am without the extra worry.

But I think this story is just griping for a simpler life like the old days, where people would walk, ride the carriage, catch a train or tractor, and take time to converse with the people around them.  When I hear my sister in LA has to drive 2-3 hours to work, or wake up at the crack of dawn, that is just disgusting!

Been writing more though, really working hard to finish a decently edited draft of my novel of working on, by the end of the weekend. It is so much fun, I know the end product will be satisfactory.