Night Hawke
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these outside links are not necessarily endorsed by me re: their position on the issues -- some agree with me on some issues and disagree on others -- they are placed here for your reference
center for democracy and technology
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American Society of Gene Therapy
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March 2000
Get the Killers Off the Road
©
2001
Night Hawke
A year ago today, March 5, 1999, my across the street neighbor's kids set out to a basketball game in downtown Chicago with their maternal grandparents in a brand new Ford Excursion. Grandpa was driving a little bit too fast and was subsequently pulled over by the Indiana gendarme. What happened next is totally unfathomable. But, unfortunately, too common and too predictable.
My future-ex had called me at work to tell me something was dreadfully wrong. The neighbor's kids mom had rushed over with the youngest son and asked her to baby-sit because there had been an emergency call. She happily obliged since her kids and our kids are in each other's basements about as much as their own.
The future-ex though was watching on television as the drama unfolded over the local news broadcast. Some dumb fucking trucker was too fucked up to tell the breakdown lane wasn't a driving lane and he ran right over the state trooper's car, the state trooper, the Ford Excursion, and 12 year old C and his 9 year old sister, her grandmother, and of course grandpa.
Little C, the trooper (a rookie), and granpa were all dead. Of course the hero trucker fuck wasn't injured at all. He was taken to the local hospital to see just what substances were coursing through his cold blooded veins. It really was a good thing that he killed a trooper or else they might have let him go at that point…. But that's another rant entirely.
I remember my introduction to Little C the prior summer when he rang my doorbell to find out how much he could get paid to de-toad my basement window wells. He'd been going through the neighborhood looking for as many toads as he could anyway. His dad told him he had to get permission first though before removing toads from neighbor's property so, he being the little entrepreneur, decided he may as well ask for money while he was there.
When I pointed out to him that I kind of liked having toads in my window wells to keep the bugs under control he then offered to sell me some of the ones that he'd caught -- of course with
a huge grin. Little C was always grinning.
But now -- he hung upside down by his seatbelt as his little sister and grandma also hung trapped beside him in the mangled SUV listening to him die -- for two hours. They were there hanging when I drove home on the 80/90 on the other side as I sat in utter horror knowing who was in that vehicle over there where all the traffic was held up, where helicopters hovered, where lights flashed, where I couldn't even tell what kind of cars had been involved.
That evening when I arrived home Little C's little brother was still in my basement in Nintendo nirvana with my two oldest ones. It wasn't until late in the evening when Big C came to retrieve him. I knew the look on Big C's face. I'd seen it in the mirror before. The look of a man who's lost his first-born son to a senseless accident.
A few days later I had the pleasure of clutching my 8 year old daughter at the funeral (above pic) as she tried to comprehend the meaning of life and death. Did this happen because God wanted Little C and Grandpa and a trooper to die that day? I just love trying to answer questions like that.
No. This happened because we let it happen. Because we have a surface transportation system that allows 80 ton vehicles to travel at seventy miles an hour on the same roadways that passenger vehicles only weighing about a ton travel at the same speeds. This happened because we put men and women behind the wheels of these 80 ton trucks and tell them you have to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and the more you drive the more you get.
There is a sensible alternative. Smaller trucks. Smaller trucks that drive shorter distances. See trains were made for hauling freight long distances. But we don't use them. We like these big heavy trucks that cost us billions in road repairs every year and untold number of deaths to passengers in passenger vehicles. We like it that way for some reason. I don't.
Someone told me we have too mature a system to change it. Bullshit. We can change anything we want. All we have to do is make sure the people with the money keep it.
Things are only impossible until they are not. --Jean Luc Picard
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An ancient buddha said, "Mountains are mountains; waters are waters." These words do not mean mountains are mountains; they mean mountains are mountains. -- Dogen