6/10/2013
Reed Hollinshead
ITD Communication
208-334-8881
reed.hollinshead@itd.idaho.gov
Malicious intent or not, 3500-lb. weapon wields destructive potential
“You close your eyes for a second and drive the length of a football field blindfolded.” - Garden City Police Sgt. Blair Brannan
BOISE - He chose the head-on impact. There was no way to avoid a collision. Against his cycle - even his heavy police "motor" - the vehicle had a distinct advantage.
He lost mobility in his left leg as a result, and a metal plate and six screws in his ankle are reminders of that encounter.
The damage to the motorcycle was significant, but a broadside hit could have been catastrophic.
“I had to choose between trying to get out of the way of this vehicle at the last second but exposing myself to a broadside hit by doing that," said Garden City Police Sgt. Blair Brannan, "or turning my cycle and facing the car head-on in the impact by putting the cycle between me and the car.”
With warmer weather comes the lure of the road, and more drivers and riders taking to the highways for summer trips. The burgeoning number of motorists heightens the chance of crashes. Add a wide variety of distractions, and the potential skyrockets. ITD and law enforcement agencies statewide remind drivers to exercise caution and drive safely.
“Your vehicle is a 3,500-lb. weapon,” said Sgt. Brannan, STEP (Selected Traffic Enforcement Program) coordinator. “Multiply that weight with the speed you’re traveling, and the destructive potential is phenomenal.”
Click here for picture of Sgt. Brannan.
Sgt. Brannan repeats his own, and numerous other, cautionary tales at the Saturday morning traffic school - formally called the Garden City Driver Safety and Education Course - as he has done over 50 times as a volunteer instructor.
By paying the class fine and completing the course, those with minor traffic infractions do not accrue points on their driving record and nothing is reported to insurance, making it a popular alternative.
Sgt. Brannan estimates that more than 6,000 people have gone through the class in its four years.
As a veteran of 22 years of police work with a father who put in 28 years with the state police and an uncle who did 32 years on the force, Sgt. Brannan has seen the destructive power of a vehicle (car, truck and motorcycle) unleashed too many times.
“On average, distractions - cell phones, cameras, the radio dial, mp3 players, makeup, shavers, magazines – deplete your concentration by 37 percent, which is worse than drunk driving,” he said.
Garden City normally has 11,000 residents. However, city streets are clogged with about 100,000 vehicle trips on the average weekday as people travel through town to reach jobs in nearby Boise and Meridian.
Sgt. Brannan recalls a situation a few years ago when a young female driver on her way to work took her eyes off the road for just a second to change the dial on her radio, at the same time as the driver of an oncoming car looked down to move a cup of coffee.
Consequently, both drivers drifted into the path of the other, it was a high-speed collision, and a horrendous crash resulted.
Drivers on the freeway are faced with hundreds of visual images that help us make about 40 decisions per minute. At freeway speed, the margin for error is slim.
“You close your eyes for a second and you drive the length of a football field blindfolded,” he said.
Many of those decisions are inconsequential, and we make them without incident. However, when the wrong decisions are made, they start to add up, then snowball, and the results can be devastating.
When a crash is the final product, bad decisions are usually the main ingredient.
Sgt. Brannan relayed a story about a young man on a motorcycle with another young man riding on the seat behind him.
“They had been drinking and passed a sheriff’s deputy, and the driver of the bike got nervous when he saw what he’d done. So he opens up the throttle and speeds up, but he can’t make the corner and ends up launching the rider behind him into a tree, which snaps his neck and kills him instantly. Neither of them was wearing a helmet and the driver was in bad shape, too.
"The paramedics get to the scene and bring him back to life three or four times," recalled Sgt. Brannan "He dies on the way to the hospital.”
“I opened up his wallet to identify him, and there’s the receipt for the motorcycle from just two days before. Along with that is a receipt for a ring. He was going to get married in six months.”
The family had the motorcycle rebuilt and donated it to the STARS program, he said. The family realized it would be very effective in getting the safety message across to young riders.
Traveling one mile at 55 mph instead of 65 mph will cost you 10 seconds, but it may prevent a crash because it now takes almost 80 fewer feet to come to a stop. As the speed increases on a heavy machine, it requires exponentially more and more time and distance to stop. A drag racer at 230 mph, for example, requires more than half a mile to come to a complete stop. By contrast, if a semi-truck could go that fast, it would need much more real estate.
Clearly, whether you’re operating a motorcycle or behind the wheel of a car, you’re in command of a heavy weapon with significant safety implications. In that situation, “patience and wisdom are worth their weight in gold,” Sgt. Brannan said.