Samantha Motion: When roads become bitumen battlegrounds

Traffic build up on Te Ngae Rd. Photo / File

OPINION
'Defensive driving' has always seemed like a terrible name for a course you take to become a safer driver.

It is probably technically a correct term but it also supports the defensive/offensive attitude a lot of Kiwis seem to take on the roads, our bitumen battlegrounds.

You, in your lightweight accelerant-powered tank against the enemy (everyone else) in theirs, just trying to get to the supermarket or drop the kids off at school.

Every orange light a red rag to a bull; every missed indicator a personal slight; every two-lane roundabout an overtaking opportunity.

In our air-conditioned travelling personal habitats, rollicking along at a velocity somewhere in the vicinity of the speed limit, there is no one more important than ourselves.

If we speed, it's because we need to - "places to be, people" - and we judge it appropriate.

Never mind if we're charging through roadworks, pinging rocks and road cones into the workers in our dust.

If we pick up our phone and take a call or send a text, it is because we judge it could not wait.

Logic dictates that the hundreds of us caught red-handed each year - just in this region - represent just a fraction of actual offenders.

Maybe we consider that we're being a bit naughty but the chances of being caught seem pretty low so we justify it to ourselves - after all, there are plenty of far worse and more dangerous drivers.

But those excuses we make are meaningless when the fact is the more we push the limits, the more we put other people and ourselves at an unacceptable risk.

I won't lecture at this pulpit and pretend I've been a perfect driver every time I've hit the road.

I doubt there is a driver in the country with an unassailable claim to the moral high ground in this particular area.

Personally, the more time I spend crawling in traffic jams, the harder it is to suppress the twitch of my hand towards my phone, or the urge to try and make up the 'lost' time by pushing the speed limit a little.

But let's be honest: The only thing that allows any of us to self-justify pushing the limits on the road or prioritising our impatience over safety and good sense is a misguided sense of entitlement.

That won't pass muster with an insurer when a driver causes a prang and nor will it constitute a defence with a judge — or, I hope, someone's own sense of morality — if they kill someone.

Little risks can have terrible consequences.

It's just not worth it.