Nearly nine months ago, a supervisor at my company, whom I barely knew, was killed in a head-on collision. Informally within the company we were told the other driver, a 47-year-old man, had a fatal heart attack then his vehicle crossed the center line into the vehicle of our co-worker. The cause of the accident was not published in local papers. The colleague was 37, married and the father of three young children.<\/p>\n
Every once in a while you hear of a driver being suddenly incapacitated then careening into something. My bit of research found two carefully documented reports that it does happen though not often at all. One cites male diabetics older than 65<\/a>, and the other focuses on coronary disease<\/a>.<\/p>\n We have long been lectured to that if you’ve been drinking don’t drive, even though it’s like “don’t litter” signs where the main violators never see the warnings or if they do think they mean someone else. (When my wife and I ran a bed-and-breakfast inn for a year we also operated the gift shop. Like most little stores we had signs reading no public restrooms. It was amazing how often those were ignored.)<\/p>\n I’m not sure how an impaired driving campaign would proceed and what good it would do. Two drinks and you should call a cab. If you’ve taken medicine that has warnings of “do not operate heavy machinery,” then even the smallest car qualifies; get a room. If you feel yourself nodding off, pull over. If your health is iffy, you’ve told friends you feel under the weather, you’ve worked half a day, golfed in the afternoon then proceeded on a four-hour drive home in 95-degree heat, maybe you should get a ride.<\/p>\n Friends don’t let friends drive dead. Then again, how can you predict? I don’t know that I — stone sober and in the peak of health — may reflexively swerve to avoid a racoon and into you. This announcement has been brought to you by C.A.D.D., Children Against Dead Drivers. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nearly nine months ago, a supervisor at my company, whom I barely knew, was killed in a head-on collision. Informally within the company we were told the other driver, a 47-year-old man, had a fatal heart attack then his vehicle crossed the center line into the vehicle of our co-worker. The cause of the accident […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4072,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2013\/01\/sofa-so-good\/","url_meta":{"origin":223,"position":0},"title":"Sofa, So Good","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Guardian Angels of Mercy II: Around 3:30 p.m. Monday 7 January 2013, I'm driving my wife and our two dogs in the Prius north on I-540 for coffee at a new place then a dog-walk. We're a mile south of \"Guardian Angels of Mercy I,\" north of Fulbright Expressway (mall\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2908,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2011\/07\/im-your-vehicle-detroit\/","url_meta":{"origin":223,"position":1},"title":"I’m Your Vehicle, Detroit","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"DETROIT -- Six days after returning home, two of the June 23-26 columnist conference's field trips burn in me, tours of the Motown Historical Museum and the new heart-of-downtown home office of Quicken Loans. Hitsville U.S.A. The museum, informally called \"Hitsville,\" is in the two original houses in which Berry\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "I'm Your Vehicle, Detroit"","block_context":{"text":"I'm Your Vehicle, Detroit","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/detroit-2011\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Door off hallway at Quicken Loans headquarters, downtown Detroit -- Rick Horowitz photo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/QuickenDoor-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2464,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/11\/taking-a-constitutional\/","url_meta":{"origin":223,"position":2},"title":"Taking a Constitutional","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"What happens when a blogger, columnist or occasional writer dawdles is the the topic either gets away, gets old or gets stolen. Hats off to colleague John Brummett. As of Nov. 2, Arkansas has three fresh amendments to the Arkansas Constitution. That will make the 88th Amendment, 89th Amendment and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":265,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/01\/thumb\/","url_meta":{"origin":223,"position":3},"title":"Thumb","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's another skirmish between Israel and the Palestinians: \"EILAT, Israel (AP) -- A Palestinian suicide bomber killed three Israelis at a bakery Monday in the first such attack inside the country in nine months, and the two radical groups that claimed to have sent him said they were trying to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1771,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/02\/man-and-superboy\/","url_meta":{"origin":223,"position":4},"title":"Man and Superboy","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2010 Ben S. Pollock Seeing the backstage drama Crazy Heart down at the Malco on its opening weekend here in Northwest Arkansas gave me lots to think about, being a good movie. It\u2019d be fine to wait for a home viewing, but leisurely, panoramic views of New Mexico increase\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1097,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2009\/04\/it-had-to-be-ewe\/","url_meta":{"origin":223,"position":5},"title":"It Had to Be Ewe","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"DATELINE DREAMLAND -- We must have gotten lost. My wife and I were on the road. It was a long trip, and it seemed to be in a foreign country, although we had a common language with the locals. We pulled over, rather than get more disoriented, and soon saw\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}