[Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
You mean: How fast can you go...to the morgue?
For "this kind of aggressive driving," there is no appropriate tire pressure.
By driving that fast, you are not only jeopardizing your own life but your friends' lives as well. You will not survive a crash at that speed.
If you hit a raccoon, you will die. If you hit a deer, you will die. If you hit a large enough bump, you will die. If you put a tire on the shoulder, you will die. If you take your eyes off the road, you will die. If you hit the brakes too hard, you will die. If your brakes aren't balanced, you will die.
When you die, you are dead. You don't get to slip another quarter in and play again. There is no CTRL+ALT+DELETE. You don't get to turn back time, take back what you did to yourself and others, or say you're sorry. It's the end of the line. You no longer exist.
In addition to your own life (and your friends'), you will ruin your family's lives, (and your friends' families' lives). People at your school will also be upset. Some will cry for you personally; others only because it’s their first frightening glimpse of mortality. There will be a big memorial in the auditorium; the principal will have his assistant buy a plaque and a nice tree and have maintenance people place them on school grounds. Five years later, a freshman will see it and say, "Hey, who were these guys and what's with the tree?" And someone else will answer, "Oh, they drove their car like 170 miles an hour and crashed it. Dude, you should have seen that thing. It didn't even look like a car anymore. I heard those guys were smeared all over the road. It was totally sick. Anyway, people were really bummed so they planted this tree for them. I think it's a maple or something."
How did he know what your car looked like? Because you made it onto the 11 O’clock news: they showed a 60 second clip with footage of your SAAB, covered bodies, fire trucks and ambulances (leaving the scene slowly), and maybe a brief interview with the poor guy who had to stop and discover you. The sexy blonde reporter will try to feign sadness and concern during the interview. When it’s done, she’ll turn to face the camera, perk up, and say, "...and now back to you Bob," who will shake his head, too, and also pretend to be sad. Then he’ll promptly brighten up and begin to chatter on with the weather man about, well, the weather.
Some years later, all your friends and classmates who cried in the auditorium will have forgotten you. They will have moved on with their lives, gotten out of school, gotten jobs, gotten married. You, however, will still be dead. And every single day of the rest of your family's lives, they will remember that twisted, crushed, unrecognizable SAAB; they will remember identifying their son's broken, mutilated body in the morgue; they will remember the burning rage directed at them by your friends' parents (and neighbors and even strangers in the grocery store); they will try not to be as rageful towards you; and they will feel the daily, saddening, painful and permanent ache that only a parent can feel when they have senselessly lost a child. By "daily," I don't mean for the next few years, the next ten, or even the next twenty. I mean every single day for the rest of their lives.
But let’s back up to just after the funeral. A policeman will come to your parents’ house and request permission to use photos of the accident to show to high school kids who are about to get their licenses. Your parents will agree, and the scene of your death will be shown for weeks on end to hundreds of kids all across your state. A friendly cop who's good with teenagers will come on stage at a high school and joke around with the audience for a bit, then get serious and explain why he's visiting, dim the lights, and turn on a slide projector.
First he'll show the skid marks and talk about estimating your speed. Next, he'll show a slide of where the car left the road, and talk about how it rose up into the air, how many times it rolled, how far, and maybe where the bodies ended up. Then comes the photo of the car itself. He'll leave that slide on for a few minutes and talk about how old you were, that you were a nice kid, got good grades, played music & sports, etc. He'll also talk about your friends and how they were nice kids. Further, he'll talk about the forces that pulverized your body. And last, he'll caution that the next slide will be very graphic, but he'll promise to show it for only a second. He'll hit the projector button, the carousel will turn, the slide will fall in front of the lens, and there on the screen, perhaps as large as fifteen by twenty feet, will be you.
Some will scream. Someone might lose it. Almost everyone will immediately avert their eyes. The cop will push the button again, and, as the next slide appears, assure everyone that it’s okay to look again. A chart containing statistics about automobile deaths will relieve his horrified audience. He will talk about how many people die each year from doing stuff like driving too fast. There’ll be lots of large numbers; maybe there will be a graph. You’ll be in there, too, buried deep in one of those numbers—just another sad statistic, just another dead kid who thought he could drive fast on the street.
Maybe you weren’t in school the day the cop came by to show you slides of car wrecks, dead people, plaques, trees, and funerals. So I’m writing to let you know what you missed. If you want to drive a car fast, do it on a track where it’s safer and legal. If you choose to do it on the street, then, if nothing else, I hope you understand what will happen if something goes wrong. Ain’t no tire pressure, no Pirellis, no airbag, no SAAB, no nothing that’s going to keep you out of the morgue.
posted by 128.95.202...
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
