Just maybe education and training is the key.
Bill Wood of American Motorcyclist Association has an interesting perspective in the September, 2006, issue of the AMM magazine:
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Sometimes, the only way to understand what's going on right under your own nose is to see it from a long way off.
At least, that's the way it seems to me right now. A couple of months ago, I wrote a column about distracted drivers ("Look Out!" July issue) following the release of a federal study indicating how dangerous these people are to the rest of us. As we detailed in a story in the same issue ("What We're Up Against"), various distractions, like talking on the phone, eating, reading, etc., can make a driver up to nine times more likely to hit you on the highway.
My own observations from my 40-mile round-trip commute each day left me feeling that we're facing a pretty hopeless situation, since the army of eye makeup applying, newspaper reading, coffee and cigarette juggling, cellphone yakking drivers seems to grow almost by the week.
That is, until I saw this issue from a different perspective.
Recently, BMW flew a group of journalists over to Germany for our first chance to ride the new R1200R. (Yeah, I know: southern Germany, the Alps, someone else's brand new motorcycle it just seems so unfair to me, too.)
You'll read about the new bike next month, and you can get a preview of the company's industry-first traction control system on page 18 this month. But in between all that, I got a chance to notice something else during my time in Germany: Apparently, people don't have to drive like idiots.
Let me point out first that the average German road is a much greater challenge to negotiate than a typical highway here in the States. City streets tend to be narrow, with cars parked inches away. Out in the country, we encountered lots of two lane roads carrying much more traffic than you'd find on similar roads over here. And then, of course, there's the Autobahn, which has a posted limit of 130 kilometers per hour (times .62, that's about 80 mph), and an unofficial limit just short of infinity (seriously, on one open stretch the Beemer's speedo was showing 200 kph-you do the math-and my rear-view mirrors were filled with an Audi flashing its brights for me to get out of the way). It all sounds like a formula for vehicular carnage, right? But that's not what we found at all.
The main impression we got of German drivers was one of exceptional competence. In short, they just don't seem to do the dumb things you expect from Americans-even under extreme conditions. How extreme? Here's one example:
We're on a scenic mountain road so narrow there's no center line. On this summer afternoon, everybody is making use of it. And I mean everybody.
There's normal traffic-cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles. Plus a group of bicycle racers on a training ride, fitting in between all the motor vehicles.
But there's much more. A vintage car racing organization is hosting a timed run along this road, so we roll under a start banner, then pass several checkpoints before reaching an end banner. Oh yeah, and the whole road runs through open range land, which means there are cows.
In a span of about 20 seconds, I pass two cows partially on the road surface, five oncoming bicyclists, two open wheel race cars, three family sedans and a tour bus. And here's the amazing part: No one seems fazed by this in the least! Everybody stays focused, works through the obstacles and keeps moving, like this happens every day.
If these drivers can deal with all that, "normal" driving must be a breeze.
And apparently, it is. When I got back to the office, I did a little research and discovered that, on a per capita basis, Germany has about half as many traffic fatalities as we do in the U.S. If we had a similar fatality rate, we'd save nearly 20,000 lives a year.
How do they do that? Part of the answer may be related to their licensing requirements. The mini¬mum driving age in Germany is 18, and extensive training, including supervised experience in a variety of traffic settings, is required before you can attempt to pass the demanding license test. (In addition, handheld cellphone use is illegal.)
But it goes beyond that. Every place we went, we got the impression that Germans take driving, and riding, seriously. They expect each other to be competent on the road.
I don't know if this expectation results in the strict licensing laws, or the licensing laws result in a national focus on highway competence. But either way, this tells me that stupidity doesn't have to be part of the driving experience.
At least not in Germany. Maybe it's a concept that will catch on here someday.
Bill Wood is AMA director of communications.