Urban Fiction: Living it Out - Day One: A New Beginning

Boom! Crunch! Bam! No, it’s not a missing episode of the old Batman TV series. –Did I just date myself? – These are the sounds we usually associate with two cars trying to occupy the same space…at the same time.

On my last shift, yes, it was hot –almost 100 degrees outside-; I had the honor of serving a couple young people who had experienced just such a scenario. I don’t know if you knew this or not, but the average car is about 15 feet in length and weighs about a four tons. Think about it, that’s 15 feet of plastic, metal and glass and meat {Guess who gets to supply the meat? Yeap, you.} at four thousand pounds zipping around the highways and byways of this great land we call home.

Imagine you are driving a comfortable two car lengths behind the car in front of you, that’s about 60 feet. Nevertheless, if you are traveling at only 35 mph, you are covering up to 51 feet per second. Now if you happen to look up, down, or at your cell phone or even blink….BOOM! Crunch! Bam! And we have to take in consideration that it takes the average person 0.20-0.25 of a second to even react. See my point?
Believe me, I’m just a street cop, so this math thing is way over my head, but those who know say that at 60 mph you are covering 88 feet per second…that’s over two car lengths in the blink of an eye. There are 5280 feet in a mile….So, 5280 feet multiplied by 60 (mph) and you get 316,800 total feet. Now, divide 316,800 by 60 (minutes in an hour) and you get 5280 feet. The final step is to divide 5280 by 60 (seconds in a minute) and you wind up with 88 feet per second, or in most cases BOOM! Crunch! Bam!
Now I don’t mind coming to the aid of motorist on the road, but I would very much rather it not be as a result of the Boom-crash-bam affect. (Smile). Just saying.