Driver's Ed

I went to a training the other day about driver safety. I'd be lying if I said part of the reason I'm into a homebirth is how afraid I am of driving and death by vehicle. I detest the idea of putting a few moments old child into a car and driving anywhere. And you know what? I'm right. Statistically, you're more likely to die in a car than a fire. And people buy insurance and have fears of dying in fires and no one bothers them, so I'm perfectly within rational here. Right? Right? RIGHT?

Anyway, there was this lunatic woman in the class who kept talking the whole time. I hate myself when I'm that person. It usually means the pace of the class is WAY too slow for me and I'm tangentially entertaining myself at everyone elses' expense. So if you've ever sat in a training with me where I talked too much, I'm sorry. Although no one's ever actually complained to me because I'm pretty sure I toss in enough smartass/clever/random that people don't get all that annoyed. I read faces ok and I don't see that tense jaw, shut-the-fuck-up-lady look. I usually see intrigue, fascination, concern, confusion, amusement... that sort of thing.

I digress.

This woman was obsessed with commenting about every single step of the training. And it wasn't that kind of training. It was a here's-the-information training. As in, statistically this is what you should do to drive safer and avoid accidents. But we had to hear her every opinion and stories of her also bitchy daughter throwing someone's cell phone during a fender bender. And she had that nasty attitude of know-it-all meets uber-negative middle aged self-righteous. Awful.

She got us all side tracked talking about how pets need to be restrained in cars and they should have laws requiring pets have seat belts.

I have to say, I get nervous when I see people riding down the highway with a dog in the back of a pickup. I'm not a fan. I've owned a pickup (it was one of the tiny ones you see all over Mexico that barely counts, but technically has a bed.) And I never, EVER put my dogs in it. Unless we were just parked and hanging out. Because they're stupid. And they'll jump out. Even if you have them tied in. Then they'll jump out and hang themselves on their own leashes. Scary.

But having them in seat belts in the car?

She pointed to people whose dogs hang their heads out the window and I just thought, I look into those dogs' eyes and see lightning true happiness. Bliss. Pure pleasure.

But she doesn't. She sees bad parenting. Poor supervision. Danger.

I used to think it was really funny when I was learning to drive to tear around corners because of how my dogs went all ragdoll in the car and fell over themselves if I caught them off guard. I was kind of a jerk then. But whatever, they loved the car. And back then I did too.

BTW, the one useful bit of info that I gleaned from this training was that they no longer recommend judging the distance between you and the next car in car lengths. (that's what I was taught when I was learning to drive and Rob was taught the same so I figure you mighta been too.) Now they say count seconds. Its more reliable than most of us are with sight estimation. So count when the car in front of you passes a post or overpass or whatever and it should be 2-3 seconds before you pass the same thing. That should give you enough stopping distance. If you're into that sort of thing.