The road toll hasn’t really moved much since 2005. Have you noticed? Yes, there were 57 fewer deaths on the road in 2010 than in 2005, which is great, even a victory, especially for the potential 57 and their families, but would you call it a satisfactory decrease? Well no, not for the 288 people who died.

from the "arrive alive" website - have you seen this?

TheVicRoads’ arrive alive page states that the Victorian road toll currently stands at 195. That’s higher than it was this time last year, albeit by one. We still have four months to go, including the Christmas/New Year/holiday season, so the final figure for the whole of 2011 will likely be well over 200 again. Now, for sure, this figure is soooo much better than the count in 1970, when 1061 Victorians lost their lives on the road, and it’s still way better than in 1989, when 776 were killed. But, with all our cleverness, with all our techno-savvy and 21st century sophistication,  we still lose close to 300 people each year. The figures are thankfully lower each year, but still, each year, we lose close to 300 living, breathing people. People just like me and you.

Picture it. 300 people. If the average family consists of 4 people, then that’s 75 families. Imagine that. 75 families! Dads, mothers, little kids, teenagers. It’s someone’s grandmother.  Or aunty, or cousin perhaps. Picture your own family. Your neighbour’s family. Imagine your whole street being wiped out. There’d be such an outcry if it was one whole street, in one fell swoop. Wouldn’t there be? But because it’s one here, one there, a couple now, a car of 4 all those months ago, and especially since the number is consistently dropping year by year, we become a bit blasé about it, somehow forgetting that it’s people. We just hear numbers. 288 last year. It’s not much different from 289. Or 287. Does that register differently for you? The extra “one”? It doesn’t much, right? It’s just a number. I know it’s that way. My evidence? Well, just get in your car and drive around the city and the state and you’ll see. To most people, it means nothing at all. But the one is all-important. It’s one life. It could be mine. Or yours. Or your best friend’s.

The frustrating thing for me is that this figure, the final tally of deaths on our roads, the one that’s calculated at the end of each calendar year, and posted on a website for all to see, (even though, I’d assert, hardly anyone looks at it) is completely and directly and unquestionably in OUR control! It’s a number that we can manipulate. Well, actually, we do! After all, we are the ones driving the cars! You and me. REALLY!!!

Be honest. Do you, when you open your car door to slide into the driver’s seat, and hopefully strap on your seat belt before putting your key in the ignition, lifting your foot off the brake, and backing out of your driveway onto the street, do you think about how you’re going to drive today? Are you going to make sure that no one dies today? Do you say to yourself something like, “Not on my watch!” Not so much.

I recently drove to Daylesford for a weekend away. I was looking forward to being away, spending a whole weekend with my friends, chatting, eating too much chocolate, drinking wine. Fantastic! But I have to tell you, my stomach turned a little when I thought about driving up. I even looked on Metlink to see if I could catch a train up there. Unfortunately not, so I had to steel myself. I absolutely dreaded that drive. Somehow, when people get onto a freeway, it’s as if the road itself transforms. Suddenly, it’s not a road, it’s a war zone. Suddenly, it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and you better strap some on, because it’s no place for the meek. Thankfully, the drink drive campaign has been pretty effective. Having a designated driver is mostly standard practice now, right? And the speed kills campaign – it’s definitely out there, although  it’s not yet really in. But there’s another killer habit that makes me really nervous on the road.

Tailgating. For the most part, I’m not really aware of many drunk drivers. I don’t see them on the road so much. Speedsters? Yeah, I see them more often. But tailgaters? ALL THE TIME! Especially on the open road.

I don’t understand it. I mean, what’s with that! How is it that people think that’s safe? That it’s acceptable behaviour? Does the fact that they’re in their own car (that is, not in yours with you), and they’ll likely never see you again, afford them the anonymity required to be a complete arsehole on the road? Apparently it does. It’s as if all the pent-up anger, and rage, and “screw you”s that get stuffed down to some extent in the workplace, or at home, or wherever, gets let loose when people get behind the wheel on roads with more than two lanes.

Tailgating. I did a Google search. Interesting. To the Americans, it means this:

tailgating in America involves your car, in a carpark, eating & drinking with family & friends

In the United Kingdom, however, it’s like Australia. It means something quite different to us than it does to our picnicking US friends. Something rather less friendly, something much more aggressive, something really nasty, and ever so dangerous:

tailgating in Australia - it's what the truck is doing to this car (image from abc.net.au)

The above image comes from the ABC website, in an article written on May 19th, 2011 by Peta Carlyon entitled, “Tunnel tailgating could have had ‘catastrophic’ results”. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing that justifies this kind of bullying. And that’s exactly what tailgating is – bullying. As a culture, we’re very public about bullying in certain situations. We’re clamping down on bullying in the school yard, in the office, at home, and even on Facebook. Brilliant. I think we need to extend the conversation to the road. I mean, think about it. If you’re the driver of the car in front, whether it’s a truck, like the one in the picture above, or another car, isn’t the experience one of being bullied?

OLWEUS, “the world’s foremost bullying prevention program”, defines bullying like this:

“A person is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons, and he or she has difficulty defending himself or herself.”

This definition includes three important components:

1. Bullying is aggressive behavior that involves unwanted, negative actions.
2. Bullying involves a pattern of behavior repeated over time.
3. Bullying involves an imbalance of power or strength.

So, what do I do, when I’m being bullied by a tailgater? I actually have two different strategies to try, each with its own merits. I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of them, and I’m more certain that I’m not the only person to use them. The first strategy is to pull over and let the car or truck overtake me. I figure that, if I can’t make the driver back off, even after my almost completely ineffective waves of the arm and mouthing instructions in the rear view mirror, all in an attempt to communicate with the driver behind me to BACK OFF!!!, then at least I can take myself out of harm’s way.

Of course, that’s not always possible. Sometimes, and much too often, I find myself in a car or truck sandwich. You know, you’ve been driving along at the speed limit, with enough distance between you and the car in front, one-a-thousand, two-a-thousand, three-a-thousand. However, the car or truck behind you doesn’t employ the same strategy. They’re close enough to you to see what radio station you’re listening to. You can’t speed up, because you’re already going at the speed limit. You look across to your left, thinking to employ Strategy No. 1, but there’s a huge truck driving along next to you. No joy there. You look to your right, and there’s a taxi or something, keeping up too. Then, that thoughtless (I’m being generous) taxi driver decides that the space between my car and the one directly in front of me belongs to him! Next thing you know, with or without a record-breaking short hit on the indicator, the taxi’s moved in, and you now find yourself in a very tight sandwich. Nowhere to go. Trapped. At the complete mercy of the vehicles that have you completely surrounded. That’s when Strategy No. 2 kicks into gear. I slow down. And the closer the car behind me gets, the more I slow down. I figure that at least, if I am going to be hit from behind, I’ll have at least pulled away from the car in front of me, and I’ll be going slower, so the impact would be reduced. Even that doesn’t always handle it. Sometimes, there’s nothing I can do, no way to get out of there. I just have to grab the wheel firmly with both hands, sit up straight, drop my shoulders, concentrate hard, and wait. Eventually, it ends. One way or another. So far, with me in one piece. Shaken – yes. Upset – yes. Annoyed – definitely. Wishing there was something that could be done to stop this – yeah.

Interesting facts:

• In a TAC Media Release (13th January, 2010) called “6 out of 10 most socially unacceptable behaviours relate to driving”, tailgating ranks #27
• In a TAC Media Release (24th January, 2011) called “Speeding, long way to the top of socially unacceptable behaviours”, tailgating ranked #25

It is when behaviours are seen as “socially wrong” and not just “legally wrong” that peer opinions and social norms start to influence behaviour.

TAC Roadsafety

This morning, I called the TAC, spoke to Eric, who informed me that I was quite right, there is no law about safe distances between cars, it depends on how fast you’re driving, so it’s variable. After chatting for a bit, with me telling him about my recent experience on the road to Daylesford, and him sharing with me how his dad is too scared to drive because of tailgating, he recommended that I call the Minister of Transport.  Great. I thought about it for all of a minute – you know, should I really do that? And then I did just that. I called the office of the Minister for Public Transport and Roads in Victoria, the Hon Terry Mulder MP. I didn’t get to speak with him directly, but was given his email address, and was promised that if I wrote to him, he’d definitely write me back in about 28 days, to give him time to do any research, etc before responding. I think I’ll do that, too.

If you drive on Victorian roads, and if you agree that tailgating is an unacceptable driving practice that something should be done about, let me know, leave a comment. I’ll include a link to this post when I write to the Minister so he can read what you have to say about it too.