The Irrational Driver

Road Safety Article

If you are a man like me, then give yourself a thumbs-up for being the first to hit mother earth. The ladies can take their turn behind us. To tell you the truth, it feels really good to be a man. After all, we never choose to. God did. Whether He sometimes regrets it or not, I cannot tell. One assurance I have is that because God says He is the ancient of days, who declares the end from the beginning, He knew that man would mess His plan .This was why He kept a joker in the second Adam. Please forgive me if you have never read or heard about the story of the first Adams, but find it difficult believing. For those who are familiar with the story and believe the story, please allow me to rehearse it for the sake of those in the second category.

I wish I had my muslim colleagues to guide me on what the Holy Koran says but according to the Holy Bible, in the book of Genesis, we are told that after God had created heaven and the earth, He also created man (Adam) after His image. He planted man in the garden of Eden to dress and keep it. God gave man the first commandment or if you like first law. He told the man that he can eat out of every tree in the garden. Man was however forbidden from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good evil or else he would die. Underlying this law was a demonstration of God’s love and the need for man to live through his free will choices. This is the same thrust of all traffic regulations. It is about, freewill, obedience and living a fuller life. It is also about choices. It reminds me of one of the literature books during my Higher School Certificate days in CMS Grammar School, Bariga, titled, Paradise Lost by John Milton. Paradise Lost, as the title connotes, captures the story of the fall of Adam. The book provided for us as literature students, an opportunity to almost question God for not using His Almighty power to stop Satan from tempting man, whom He knew would fall.

Back to our story. We are also told that when God saw how lonely Adam was, with only trees and living things as companions, He sought a help meet for man. God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and took one of his ribs from which he made the first woman whom Adam named as Eve. Before the woman came, Adam was having great fun with God, communing daily without hitches. This was simply because Adam was a sticker for rules as set in the garden by God. Obedience was his watchword. His dress sense was creative.

His relationship with God was mutual, like the one I have with my dogs-no quarrel, no malice, only peaceful cohabitation. However, this mutual relationship was strained immediately Adam had company in Eve. It was after Eve’s emergence that the serpent-devil drew the first blood. His first trick, according to one of my favorite television preachers, Creflo Dollars, was to contradict God’s words and commandments. First, he questioned what God had said, misquoted God and finally added to what God had said to Adam. Remember that Eve was not there when God gave the commandment. She, I believe, was informed by Adam.

If you are familiar with the story, I believe that the serpent who is said to be more subtle-cunning, crafty, not intelligent knew that Adam could have been a hard nut to crack since he was the original recipient of the commandment.  Communication experts would tell you that no message remains the same when passed from one recipient to another. There is always some kind of adulteration. Not because the first recipient would not convey the exact content of the message precisely, but perhaps because the second carrier will distort, not willing though, but because of some external interference. These perhaps explain why the serpent sold the fruit bait to Eve, not Adam who fooled him to eat the fruit. The rest, like they say, is history which God through the second Adam-Jesus is trying to repair.

If you agree with me, Adam was complacent. With all the comfort at his disposal, daily communion with God without the fear of network failure or meltdown affecting his ability to reload, he fell like a park of cards when told to eat. Such complacency has eaten deeper in our society with Adam’s protégé’s- men playing the Adam theatrics. It is this same complacency that has given us the ugly traffic trend that we have today. The daily traffic build-up, crashes, available deaths and the maimed bodies. Recall the story I told last week of the wife who refused to move their son who was lapped by her husband in the front passenger seat to the back when told to do so by my officer. Remember that like Adam who daily communed with God, the man had just left the church where I even spoke on the need for parents to be the change agent in our collective desire to stop deaths on our roads.

Ever since I got involved with the job of policing our roads, male complacency has remained a disturbing factor. Why, I do not know. But if you are in the law enforcement business then you will appreciate the point I am trying to drive home. Why male ego gets provoked only when in the company of a female, I am yet to fathom. My daily experience is that it is easier to mould a man’s driving habit when he is alone than when he is with a lady. No matter the sophistication of your arms, that man would rather assault, challenge, threaten and speak all manner of words.

I wonder why Adam lacked such guts to challenge, threaten, and even assault the devil when he came with his fruit bait. The world would have been a better place today. Men are the most mobile because they are the breadwinners. If you take a look at the traffic violations pattern, more male drivers are apprehended daily as against female drivers although there are fewer females compared to male drivers. Although, I am yet to see research work that explains why male tendency to flout traffic rules exist, I however, know that male drivers take more risks such as excessive speed and James Bond stunts all to prove that they are masters of the wheel. If you visit clubs, the liquor addicts are mostly men and that explains why any random test conducted will show more male drink drivers, than females.

This male mobility also reflects in the crash index as more men get killed through crashes. The first six months of 2023 example speaks volumes. Between January and September,2023, more males lost their lives in crashes as against females. The story, I believe is the same in other states. Yet, despite these facts, our driving behavior especially in Lagos is marred by impatience and violent rage with less efforts being put in reducing the daily risks on the road by improving driving behavior which the Australian Journal of Social Issues, notes is critical.

What this means is that a driver must before embarking on a journey ask some vital questions such as, “am I in a proper condition and mood to drive”. The driver must worry about emotions that affect driving habits leading to unwise decisions and even road rage. According to the Land Transportation Office of the Philippines, these emotions include anger, anxiety and excitement. You must also consider your physical conditions as certain injuries and or illnesses can hamper your safety if driving. If you therefore value your life and others, you would exercise patience and caution by staying off the wheels, choosing instead to be driven by someone else or forgo the trip when you recognize your state of mind.

This is imperative for those who believe that their driving gets better only after a bottle or two, ignoring the truth that alcohol impairs your driving, affects your vision, judgment and reflexes. The same is the case with some medications. A good number of times; I have accosted drivers who would acknowledge that they are sick, dizzy, yet would insist on driving to go see a Doctor. Others would confess that they are bereaved and, in that state, indulge in driving to the village in such a mood.

In our clime, just like in other developing societies, as the number of vehicles increases, so does the number of new and inexperienced drivers, including young drivers with the penchant for taking unnecessary risks while driving. With unemployment and poverty index coupled with high illiteracy level, a good number of drivers are drop outs and are bogged by certain personal challenges that daily affects sound judgment and concentration. So, each time you drive, always remember that you share the road with other users whose state of mind you cannot comprehend. This is why I advise caution. Caution because there are always drivers who are emotionally imbalanced, road hazards such as broken-down vehicles and black spots to avoid .

This is why you must avoid all forms of distraction. You must also avoid multitasking such as phoning and driving or operating gadgets such as changing stereo. Ironically, we daily play Adams folly script by script. Just as Adam allowed the serpent to contradict God’s words and commandments with just a little lie that has bonded humanity and provided the basis for everything negative in our society, we do the same. Every time you strive to raise the bar of society’s consciousness, we rarely ask what the laws say, what we are expected to do and the rationale for such expectations.

Instead, we became critics. We forget that these laws are meant to save us. We also forget whenever these crashes occur, it takes whoever erred including innocent souls. I recall a case where one of the Lagos big boys was flagged down for driving and phoning. Rather than obey, he went on claiming that he is not aware of any law that says he cannot drive and phone. This same big boy would shiver and shudder if he were to be picked up by Police in Cotonou or the United Kingdom, he would not question them but would rather play Mr. nice.

 Same contradiction is what we indulge in each time we ignore the implications of speed as a risk factor responsible for many crashes that have claimed lives. A good number of drivers believe that excessive speeding distinguishes them as expert drivers. Some would question the rationale for restricting speed to 100km/h when their machines have the capacity to do 180 or even 200km/h. Such people are conversant with the speed limit. They however make grave choices daily and like Adam, blame us for not being there or for government failure to fix the road. It is for such people that we are fine-tuning our strategies to checkmate speed induced road traffic crashes on some critical corridors preparatory to our end of year patrol operations.