Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Analogy

Originally posted 1414 10 Apr:

I got this from a friend intimately involved in the San Francisco situation. It provides some food for thought...

"As I left home yesterday to go to a meeting, I decided to take a longer route based upon the flow of traffic, the 4 lane was generally faster and had less stoplights with the amount of traffic on the road. I chose this although knowing that it had more turnoffs and more traffic, it flowed a little quicker than the 2 lane which could be held up by a single person and no passing on the road. I had to be on time, and I was being pushed by a late appointment that I didn't know until the last minute, but I had near enuf time to make it.
As I left my condo, I looked up as I left the parking garage, yucky, it was intermittant showers, with coral roads, dumb drivers, and traffic, I'd have to watch out for stupid people, but I'd done this many times before, and even at high speeds, my good tires would hold the road like they were designed to do. I didn't travel this other route often, but this time I didn't have a choice, I had a last minute appt. to make because of my boss.
On the 4 lane, the speed limit was 35, and traffic travelling at about 40 mph, not too bad, I was pretty sure that I was gonna make my appt. it was not as bad as I thought. The roads were still wet, but at that speed they were safe as long as I watched out for crappy drivers, this lovely island is rife with single car accidental deaths.
I'd actually made almost 9 of the 12 miles to the appt. when a centerlane car decided to pull out in front of me and cut me off about 3 feet in front of me, I swerved into another driver to the right of me and off the road we went. So, it was a 3 car accident with injuries. We were close to a cliff on the hill, and it could have been so much worse if we had not hung up on the side of the road. I got a ticket for swerving to miss the driver that cut me off, illegal lane change, haha, but I was happy that I was not hospitalized, and laughed at the ticket. The primary driver who pulled out in front of me had no insurance so it will be a civil thing, and here, that means nothing will happen to them. The 3rd driver had no choice, but at least had insurance.

The story?
1. The police investigation gave me a ticket for illegal lane change.
2. The Naval investigation cited:
a. Improper voyage planning, timing was determined against route and undue danger was not taken into proper planning before hand.
b. Supervisor did not request more time prior to planning voyage due to time restraints, should have requested more time to plan.
c. Supervisor chose route with more possiblities of incident, but did not request or perform a better route based upon time restraints, should have been more cautious.
d. Supervisor chose undue speed without thought of weather conditions, traffic patterns, and hazarded himself and vessel.
e. Hazarding a vessel, the Supervisor swerved to avoid an impact, therefore causing a 3rd impact with another underway vessel.
f. Charged with hazarding a vessel based upon the above findings and the vehicle confiscated.

Luckily, this is only a interesting read to think about a few things. Read it, and ponder, and really think about it..."

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home