Just Me

So, on wednesday, I’m driving back to the office after an early lunch. Minding my own business and all that, as I cross the river, I see there’s a line of traffic stopped ahead and decided to stop myself. Just as I come to a halt, I’m thinking, “Dum-De-Dum-d’SMACK! WTF???”

Yup, the driver in the car behind me had for some reason decided that he didn’t want to wear out his brakes or something and drove into the back of my car. Suddenly, it was as if someone had pulled the chain and flushed the great day that I was having.

Before I’ve even unbuckled my seat belt the other driver is at my door apologising, I get out to have a look at the damage and sure enough his car needs a bit of waxing and mine needs a new bumper, boot-lid, light cluster various other bits and prolly a lick of paint and some dirt to make it look like it did 2 minutes previously.

Details were exchanged etc. etc. and I went back to the office, called my insurance comapany and arranged to have some one look the car over for an estimate on the repairs. Once that was done, I got on with my days work and finished a bit early to go get the estimate sorted (Thanks Bosses ;))

I woke up thursday and my necks locked up and sore as hell, off to the doctor I go. Thankfully it’s just some muscle issues and nothing more serious, got some medication and off back to bed with me for the day. The Doctor warned me one of the pills would make me drowsy but that was an understatement. within 20 minutes of taking it I was asleep not drowsy, out cold!

My necks still too stiff today for me to look in my mirrors, so no driving for me. At least it’s not sore anymore and at this late stage of the day it’s starting to get a bit more movement, so here’s hoping that I’ll be waving my head around like some bimbo valley girl again in no time.

On tuesday last, Ireland witnessed one of the worst traffic accidents in our history. It’s been covered plenty on breakingnews.ie so I’m not going to go into details here, my sympathy goes out to all those involved and their families and friends. This was a truly terrible accident, myself and Elly passed the scene about 10 minutes before it happened. I hope you’ll forgive me for feeling relieved that we weren’t involved.

Something positive has to come from a tragedy like this and I hope it’s helped others to think about the way they drive, the way it has made me think about how I drive. The question that comes to my mind is “so, how fast should you drive in fog?”

Tonight, I did some calculations and worked/puzzled this out. At 120Kph you move a little bit more than 33 meters every second. That’s obviously far to fast to be travelling if you can only see 20m or 25m and thats still only a light fog. If you come up to a stationary object it’s already too late to brake.

So what speed is safe?

Lets say you can see 20m. That’s about 65 feet. What distance can you stop your car in, from what speed? is 70Kph slow enough? Well, you travel about 19.5m in 1 sec. Could you react and stop your car in 1 sec? I know I don’t want to find out.

Even at half that speed you only have 2 secs to react and avoid something thats happened 65 feet ahead. Think about that next time you start your car, I know I will.

Lets make that the positive thing that comes from this, think about how you drive. Not just the speed, your road manners as well. Indicate when you’re going to make a turn or change lane not as you do it. Don’t stay in the overtaking lane if you’re not overtaking and leave earlier so you’re not in a hurry. and maybe we’ll all help make our roads safer for us all.

Top Gear was back for it’s new series on sunday night last. Some thought the show might not return but thankfully it hasn’t worked out that way and once again messers Clarkson, May and yes, the Hamster is back and not looking one bit worse for wear. Lets not forget, he did roll at over 280 Mph.

After all the Hamster has been through, you have to admire his strenght in getting back onto the show not to mention talking about it so openly. Allowing the clips of his “prophetic” comments to be shown and the footage of the accident itself is something I don’t think I could do in private not to mention in a crowded room being watched by literally millions of people and well to be fair I hope I never have to.

There are probably loads of places online to see the video of the accident itself, but to be honest, I think I’d rather take the spirit of Richard’s “lets never talk about the accident again” comment, and well if ye missed the show, sorry but you’ll need to look elsewhere to find that video clip.
It’s said that a person is defined by how they handle themselves in the hardest of times, Richard Hammond, I salute you.

Right so what else did we learn? well lets see, road works don’t have to take weeks if you put a little bit extra in, in terms of planning and scheduling, so long as you plan the diversion in advance.

Jamie Oliver, is a seriously good wet weather driver!

And there’s still life in Jaguar.

Well like the title says, I’ve had a busy week. I’m not sure where all my time went but I know a fair slab of it went into the office As a result I haven’t posted much so I thought I’d do some lightning posts of things that caught my attention this week.

Unfortunatly it’s not possible to do that with out mentioning the tragedies that monopolised the news this week. That said I don’t want to get into the Steve Irwin thing to much, I think plenty has been said online already and all I would like to add is that his family have my deepest sypathies as does the family of another great Australian, Peter Brock, who sadly lost his life in a seperate accident this week.

I hope that this week won’t be remembered as the week that two great human beings, entertainers of the people, Australians, and most of all hero’s lost there lives. I don’t think any man wants to be mourned when they go doing what there best at. I chose to remember their accomplishments and the special way they both had of inspiring and making others smile.

I’ll leave the closing words on this post to the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard who simply said “It’s been a pretty sad week for Australia”