‘Speed kills’ is lesson of accident

Given the virtual state of anarchy that exists out on the open road these days, it was only a matter of time before there occurred an accident such as the horrific crash on Interstate 95 at Carmel Sunday that took the lives of seven people, including four young children.

The tragedy was certainly a shocker; the accident scene not one readily forgotten by witnesses nor police and rescue workers. But to anyone who regularly travels the interstate, the fact that it happened came as no great surprise.

In a letter to the editor after the tragedy, motorcyclist David Reed of Bangor wrote that he read about the accident “not with sadness, but disgust.” He suggested that the driving habits of the average citizen “have gotten so sloppy, so selfish, that tragic accidents like this are not only foreseeable, but almost mandatory…”

The Carmel accident occurred when the driver of a rented sport utility vehicle carrying the seven victims came quickly upon vehicles in the northbound travel and passing lanes and swerved into the breakdown lane to illegally pass the congestion. The vehicle, which state police have estimated was traveling in excess of 90 mph, clipped one of the other vehicles when returning to the travel lane, rolled over and came to rest in a stand of trees in the median strip. All seven occupants died at the scene. A relative of several of the victims has suggested that a medical emergency may have prompted the excessive speed. An investigation continues.

“As a motorcyclist, I often see the extreme disdain that many drivers have for other drivers on the road,” Reed explained in his letter. “To those of you who think it’s worth it to fly up the highway and blow past the slowpokes doing 65 or 70, or down a major street, through a school zone, at 45 or 50 [mph] in a 25 [mph zone], I hope you will think of this foreseeable tragedy and ask yourself it it’s really worth the risk to get where you’re going 15 seconds sooner…”

Even if you’re not riding, unprotected, aboard a Harley Hawg it can be scary out there amongst the crazies. Travel the interstate and you’ll soon find that if you drive the posted speed limit you quickly become two things in the mind of the motoring public: 1) the World’s Biggest Dope for obeying the law; and 2) a prime candidate to get flattened by the yahoo riding your rear bumper as though he were hooked there by tow bar.

Set your vehicle’s cruise control automatic-pilot gizmo on 70 mph in an illegal concession to the law-breaking crowd that is all around you in 65-mph country, and you feel like you’re parked as they rocket by you at 80 or 85 or 90 mph – a goodly percentage gabbing on a cell phone while doing so.

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Cruising through the Alton Bog in close proximity to the posted speed limit recently, I checked the rearview mirror to find that the coast was clear for easily a mile behind. I cranked up my CD player and kicked back to enjoy the immortal George Jones warble a lament about drinking and cheating and love gone wrong, as only The Great One can do. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, some little 98-pound pony-tailed kamikaze sweetheart piloting a clunker that, by rights, ought to have had “Unsafe At Any Speed” stenciled across its hood, practically blew my doors off in passing. In my subsequent critique of her performance I noted that the only real surprise about such a routine event was that her car did not bear Massachusetts license plates.

Maine State Police spokesman Steve McCausland acknowledges that speeds are “creeping upward” on the interstate. “It’s obviously something we’re concerned about,” he said Thursday in disclosing that no changes in enforcement strategies are contemplated because of the Carmel tragedy. But the public should have no doubts about state police keeping apace in their enforcement of speeding laws, by aircraft as well as on the ground, he said.

As well, troopers have a secret weapon in cell phone-toting drivers (see inveterate cell-phone geeks, above) who, when they aren’t preoccupied with talking nonsense with some other cellphoniac while driving, apparently love nothing better than ringing up the cops to rat out motorized miscreants they encounter.

To me, that seems somewhat less fulfilling than being collared by Old Blue on his own initiative, lying in wait at some strategic interstate median strip crossover, radar gun locked in the Gotcha! position and ticket book at the ready. But I suppose that some might call this progress.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net