“PTSD continues in unexpected ways. I’m still hypersensitive to noise, anxious in crowds. I cry at the tiniest prompting, often at kindness and evidence of a shared humanity.“<p>I would never associate ptsd with these symptoms. My daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia in May ‘17 (she’s responded well to treatment so far) and I’m susceptible to all of these - but I would never have labelled it as ptsd.
The number of comments on that article along the lines of "this happened to me / my family member" is illuminating.<p>I think as individuals we don't have a good understanding of just how harmful motor vehicles are. This is even though most people know of someone that was killed or maimed before adulthood. Like suicide, I think the consequences of motor vehicle crashes are mostly hidden. This doesn't only apply to the fatal crashes. I'm sure people that are maimed tend to venture into the public domain less often than the able-bodied. If they were more visible, we might be more aware of the carnage that happens on our roadways.<p>I think there will come a time when the idea of guiding a couple of tonnes of metal at speeds of up to 70km/h within a metre or two of pedestrians will seem absurd.
Stuff like this makes me wish for self driving cars the most. I am fine with killing myself with my driving but it would be very hard to deal with killing another person. I think most of us pretty much every day sometimes don't pay attention and could potentially cause an accident. It's just pure luck getting away with these mistakes.
> I turned left on to the main road, and began to move up through the gears. That’s when a car coming towards me flashed its lights. This used to happen to me a lot in the Mini. So much that a couple of years earlier I’d taken it back to BMW to get it checked; yes, my headlights were wrongly adjusted and I had inadvertently been annoying other drivers. So when this driver flashed, I instinctively flashed back: “No, those aren’t my main beams – these are, see?”
> The time between my flash and the impact was infinitesimal.<p>I’m having a hard time understanding the crash as there is so much information absent from the article.<p>What kind of main road was this?
Was it in a town or a A road between two towns?
Was it designed for pedestrian usage (there are lots of A roads in the U.K which are not designed for pedestrian usage. These roads are often known as BYPASS roads and are designed to keep motor vehicles out of town centres).
Was it street lit? Given the fact that the other driver flashed him I would think not?
What was the speed limit? Was it appropriate for the road?
It's my wish that someday speed limit is strictly enforced.
Instead here, the norm is for people to go 10 to 15 mph over speed limit. If you don't speed, you will receive harassment from the vehicle behind -- flashing of lights, honking, or tail-gating.
Please don't call it an "accident". The Associated Press recommends using the term "crash" instead.<p><a href="https://www.transalt.org/news/releases/9545" rel="nofollow">https://www.transalt.org/news/releases/9545</a>