“Don’t tell me pregnant women can’t get a safety belt around their waist,” said Jim, patting his stomach, a large protuberance threatening to pop the bottom button of his shirt. “I’m 279 pounds–down from 394. I’ve been pregnant all my life and I wear a safety belt. You strap it under the belly, and if there’s a sudden stop, the baby can’t slip out ’cause it’s held in tight.”
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“Please stand up, state your name and where you are from.” These directions were from Ron, one of the two instructors required for this four-hour course. Policemen by day, they teach at night in the traffic safety program put into effect in mid-November.
Ron, decked out in a dark blue suit and a yellow power tie, seemed almost nervous as he read word for word from his teaching manual about what we were going to do. I got the feeling he had done this hundreds of times before but never quite understood it himself.
“The most important lesson in defensive-driving skills is the three Es,” said Ron. “Education, engineering, and enforcement.” The vinyl charts propped on a display stand illustrated all three points. We looked at page after page of cartoons of hills, weather conditions, and curved and straight roads. But there wasn’t one little double-parked car in sight.
After a ten-minute recess, Jim took over, giving Ron a much-needed rest. In a thick Kentucky accent, Jim carefully explained that the only person on the road you can trust is yourself. “One person dies every nine minutes,” he said. “That means, since we’ve been sitting here, 18 people have died. Every 18 seconds someone is injured in or by a car and a report is filed. That means we spend $5,821 a second in vehicle damage.” He paused. “One out of every five drivers had a car wreck this year. One out of every 20 drivers are drunk.” He said he’d like to control how and when he dies. “When I’m 87 I want to be shot by (somebody’s) 19-year-old boyfriend–not until then. Then I’m going to lie in the hospital until I’m 92 and use up all of my Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and pension money and let my children work for their own money.”
“Now, antihistamines,” he said. “When the doctor prescribes something for you, ask him if you can take it and drive. If not, he’ll write you something else. I didn’t do that once and he gave me something for my sinuses, and when I brought it to the pharmacist and asked him what was in it, he told me it would not only plug up my sinuses but my other end as well.”
