Letter Re: Lessons From Wayward Motorists

Mr. Rawles:
Here is a quote from a recent news story: “A 67-year-old man found alive days after his car plunged 200 feet off a mountain road built a makeshift camp, ate leaves and drank water from a nearby creek to survive, his daughter said.”

Interesting. “Non Life Threatening Injuries”! 

Lessons learned:

(1) Leave a trail of breadcrumbs? Let folks know where you’re going, your route, and when to expect a check-in. This lesson is oft repeated in stories of fatalities.

(2) Put some water in your car’s backseat. Hook the seat belt to it so it doesn’t become a missile. Plan for a few days; if not a week.

(3) Communications? Combine an idea from a commercial — a weather balloon on a tether. Signal fire. Air horn. FRS or CB radio. Whistle. 

(4) Society needs to engineer roads that can detect accidents or cars leaving the roadway. I remember in the 1960s a Nevada State Trooper told me that the road crews would create a small ridge of dirt a little off the road so that they could see when a driver fell asleep and drifted off the road. He said they found people a considerable distance away from the road. That seems like a cheap way to detect such accidents.

(5) As always, awareness. It’s a dangerous world out there for us very fragile humans.

Now imagine this happening in The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI). Scary!

Regards, – F.J.