Highway High Anxiety? Is That All? Better Just Count Your Blessings

If driving hazards are raising your blood pressure, be grateful that’s the extent of the damage.

This is the message from Lynn Carhart Schmidt, who was reacting to my recent column about a freeway near-collision.

“We all go through these frightening experiences on a constant basis, and usually we survive with little more than high blood pressure,” she says.

On the same day and on the same freeway as my near-crackup, her younger brother, Lorin Scott Carhart, “was not so fortunate,” she says. “He too was heading south on the Costa Mesa Freeway (where it becomes Newport Boulevard), just north of Fair Drive, on his bicycle when a speeding truck went out of control and took a son, grandson, brother, uncle, cousin, nephew and friend from us.

“My brother was 25 years old and had his whole life in front of him. He was just starting out and had a good future. The man who killed my brother survived.

“I wish he had been made to attend my brother’s memorial service. It was something he would have never forgotten. All (my brother’s) friends were there. Some had known him most of his life. They all had the same question on their minds: Why? My brother never should have died. It was avoidable, preventable and very wrong.”

Her brother’s passing was noted in a five-sentence news brief. End of story. End of life.

Schmidt’s letter woke me up in a way the close call I wrote about had not. Sure, when my car was nearly smashed, I caught my breath and my heart pounded, as I envisioned myself crushed and bleeding in a pile of crumpled metal, just as I had seen so many other victims in my days on an ambulance crew back East.

But then I drove away unscathed. Like a rat in a Skinner box, I got the positive reinforcement I needed to keep doing what I had been doing.

But a few miles and a couple of hours away, that could just as easily have been me listed in the newspaper. Change some other variables and it could have been you.

At the time she wrote the letter, Schmidt says she did not know why the driver of the truck that hit her brother had lost control, or whether alcohol or drugs were involved. Later, the driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter, felony drunk driving and driving without a license, according to Sgt. Robert Ballinger of the Costa Mesa Police Department.

“I do know there is no excuse for reckless, drunk/drug related drivers,” Schmidt says. “Our country has very lax penalties for these offenses. I think it should be dealt with as any other murder. Other countries not only take away your driver’s license, they also throw you in prison and throw away the keys.

“People have no excuse for driving too fast, intoxicated or recklessly. There is no need for it. Almost every day, I pick up the newspaper and read how another drunk driver killed someone and yet, they (the driver) lived.

“I guess no one ever said life was fair. Any day might be our last, all because some irresponsible person got behind the wheel. We are like glass, fragile and breakable. Gone before you can blow a candle out. Gone forever. “

Schmidt also describes her brother, who lived in Costa Mesa and worked as a chef in Irvine. He commuted by bicycle. “He would have made a good husband and a wonderful father someday, if only he had been given that chance,” she writes.

She also comments about U.S. driving mores: “Whatever happened to driving safely, always watching out for the other guy? Now it’s, let’s drive at least 20 m.p.h. over the speed limit, unless there is a police officer next to you, see who can get through the stop sign first, if you feel like stopping at all. I know a lot of people are afraid to drive the speed limit for fear of being shot at by someone wanting to go fast, but will it really get you there any faster?

“The traffic in Orange County makes any trip a long one. If everyone could only slow down, drive responsibly--and this also means sober--you may be saving a life, and that life may be your own.”

Of course, the day everyone drives responsibly is as far from our grasp as the morning in that TV commercial that begins with the announcement that world peace has been declared and “skies will be sunny for the rest of the century.” But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother trying.

Gary Dye, one of the bicycle commuters featured in last week’s column, offers a more realistic forecast: “I hope that when I’m 65, I’m still riding a bike--unless I get hit by a truck or something.”