S11Ep10 Story Series: Are They Chucking Beer Bottles at Me?

In this SafeStart story series, Danny retells a story heard at a leadership session from a man who witnessed a group of young people on the bed of a pickup truck smashing beer bottles on the road while he was driving behind them and details the incident that happened when he tried to alert the driver to get them to stop.

Host: Danny Smith 

Transcript

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Driving Safety and Frustration

Danny Smith 0:08

Welcome back to Safe Talk with Saf Start . I'm Danny Smith and today we continue our Story Series . And a quick reminder in this series that it involves a true story and it allows you an opportunity to improve your Safe Start skills . Now . We originally heard this story a number of years back in Boston where one of our consultants was doing a leadership session for a major international company . During the sessions the leaders were introduced to how Safe Start utilizes storytelling as a teaching tool and then they were asked to share a story themselves , specifically a driving story .

Danny Smith 0:43

There was one gentleman in the room who had immigrated to the US from Turkey and as he began his story he said in the United States and some other countries it's kind of a given that when you're a teenager that someone you know will have access to a car because you're a wealthy country , you'll learn to drive and you may even own your own car as a teenager , or at least you'll get to borrow your parents on a regular basis . But , he said , I grew up in Turkey and Turkey is not nearly as rich of a country as the United States . But his family , he said , was very fortunate in that they did have a car , but that car was needed for the family business . It was incredibly important to them . It was their livelihood , he said . He continued by saying if something happened to the family car , they weren't going to be able to put food on the table . So when he got his license as a teenager , he said he had never had anyone drill him on the importance of safety and especially being careful behind the wheel as his father did . He said it wasn't just I can't get hurt in an accident , he said I could put the entire family at risk if something happened to the car . So he said he really took that lesson to heart .

Danny Smith 1:55

He told us that he was a very conscientious driver and because of being that very conscientious driver he would notice things Even at a young age . As a young driver he noticed the behavior of other people and he would try to stay away from them . In other words , he was practicing defensive driving . He said One particular day he noted that he was driving back home at the end of the work week and he's driving back on a multi-lane road , two lanes of traffic in each direction . He came up behind a pickup truck kind of a crew cab deal where there's a lot of construction workers who , at the end of their week as well . Now the cab is full and there's also a bunch of the crew who are sitting in the truck bed . Now , if you're like me , you're probably listening and thinking wait a minute , guys riding in the bed of the truck , seat belts . Well , I suppose that some of that is out the window , or in the truck bed , as you'd say , in some countries . And you know , as I was preparing to record this , I even did a quick Google search and I found out it's still legal in many US states for adults to ride in the back of pickups as well . So maybe it's not that foreign of a concept . You're part of the pun at all .

Danny Smith 3:02

So back to this leader's story . The crew in the back of the truck , or well , that's all the newbies , they're the rookies . They don't get the seats in the front , as you can imagine . They get to sit in the back or have to sit in the back . And since it's the end of the day , and presumably the end of the week for them as well , well , they're drinking some beer as they're riding , and as they're young adults , maybe even teenagers , they do what young people do when they're finishing their beer bottles as soon as they find the bottom of each bottle , they're tossing them over the edge of the truck bed just to watch them smash on the road . And as our storyteller is following them , he saw the first one happen and well , that certainly got his attention .

Danny Smith 3:45

Well , a few moments later he sees the second beer bottle smash on the road and you know there's a lot of hooping and hollering about this and our guy is telling the story . He's starting to get a little mad about this because it's dangerous . I mean probably not going to do anything like rupture a tire or anything like that , but just the fact these guys are throwing beer bottles out in front of him and crashing them in the roadway in front of him is starting to irritate him . So he pulls the family vehicle into the passing lane , hits the accelerator to pull up beside the driver and he's going to give him a piece of his mind . He cranks down the passenger side window , rather , and he honks the horn to get the driver's attention . He starts yelling at him about this bunch of knuckleheads in the back of the truck throwing their beer bottles . And , as you can imagine , our consultant and the other leaders in the room at this point are very invested into the story and the guy just pauses and everybody looks up and says so , so did the guy get the guys in the back , the driver get the guys in the back to stop throwing the beer bottles . And the leader sharing the story just said I have no idea . That's the last thing I remember he said . As I was yelling at the other driver , I didn't see the vehicle in front of me had stopped and hit their brakes and he smashed full speed into the back end of the vehicle in front of him so he never even touched his brakes . By the way , he was traveling about 60 miles an hour . You can just , you can just imagine the impact .

Danny Smith 5:18

Right Now . This is a great place for us to pause the recording and give you an opportunity to think about what led up to this incident . Focus on the states and the errors of the driver . Also , think a bit about how this could have been worse . And then , obviously , the big thing here is , think about which critical error reduction techniques the driver could have used to prevent this from happening in the first place . So we'll come back . We'll hit and pause the recording here and we'll come back in just a couple of moments . All right , I'm back . So how'd you do ? Remember ? Your answer doesn't have to exactly match mine . What's important is the exercise and thinking through this Now .

Danny Smith 6:03

To me , obviously , the biggest state that we're dealing with here is frustration , although arguably there may be some complacency involved here as well , but I think frustration is the one that just really is . Set it off , if you will . You know , frustration can get the better of anybody . It can cause us to take our eyes and our mind off the road and off the task , if you will , which , in this case , is driving , and that's fine if you have your eyes or mind off takes momentarily . But if you're driving and you've got this heavy vehicle that you're driving and you're navigating down the roadway , well , it's easy to see how that could be a problem . Right , and we've all been complacent while we're driving . But what we really need to do is start working on some of these critical error reduction techniques . By the way , the errors here I think line of fire is pretty obvious , probably along with eyes and mind not on task leading to the line of fire as well , because he was probably looking and thinking about the other driver and the guys in the back of the vehicle instead of what was right ahead of him . Right , and certainly that caused a problem with line of fire .

Danny Smith 7:06

So what do we do to combat this ? Well , a couple of things , first of all , with complacency . We always know that practicing a habit is something that we can work on to help to prevent things , and one of the best ones that we have in Safe Start is just getting your eyes back on the road quickly when you've been distracted and I always say it that way when you've been distracted , because it's not a question of if , it's a question of when right , we all get distracted from time to time as we're driving . May not be people throwing beer bottles out of the back of a pickup , but certainly there are distractions inside and outside of the vehicle that can quote unquote , get us right . A quick related sidebar here Road rage , certainly in our society , has gotten really , really out of hand .

Danny Smith 7:50

So I've started personally working on a new habit and I'm encountering people that aggravate me on the roadway Just pulling over , let them go on by . You know , one of my pet peeves is people who tailgate , people who get right up behind you , and that really aggravates me . Just pardon , the pun grinds my gears right . So I've learned that I just need to pull over , let them get by and let them go on their way . You know , if it's somebody that's really out of hand and doing some other things , maybe I need to call the police or whatever , but in most cases , just get out of their way .

Danny Smith 8:24

Now , in this story , I get it . You know the guys in the back of the pickup . They're a bunch of knuckleheads . Let's just call it like it is . But you and I probably encounter things like this maybe not their beer bottles , but what we would classify as knuckleheads behind the wheel on a daily basis in our commutes . In fact , if you think about it and you're like me well there's probably a few people out there that think that my driving at times constitutes some knuckleheaded behavior as well . So maybe it's not throwing beer bottles or anything else out of a moving vehicle , but I think it's fair to say we've all made mistakes behind the wheel , and that's where the cert of looking for others for that state- to- error pattern really comes into play . It helps us not only prevent being in somebody else's line of fire if they make a mistake , but it also gives us that opportunity state-to-error internalize that pattern and use that as a reminder to help fight our own complacency when we're behind the wheel .

Danny Smith 9:23

Now , in this story , I'm sure you're like me and you're probably thinking well , what happened ? What happened to the story ? Obviously he didn't get killed because he's here telling the story . But what's the rest of the story ? As Paul Harvey famously used to say , what happened to your family business ? Or you know , did you really struggle for a year or so ? Or what happened Now ? Obviously , his father forgave him , as any parent would . They're probably just glad that he actually survived this .

Lost Perspective on Near-Death Experience

Danny Smith 9:54

But our consultant and the other leaders in the room were just so caught up in the fact that this gentleman had so narrowly escaped death they didn't stop to ask us father .

Danny Smith 10:05

Instead , they really focused in on how easily this could have been a fatality or perhaps could have left in a medical condition where his family had even more pressure on them because they had to take care of him long term . Unfortunately , we've also lost track of the storyteller through the years . As I mentioned , this was a number of years ago , so we don't have a way to find out exactly how this story ended as far as his family's reaction , and that's really a shame , because I would love to have heard this story from his perspective and hear him tell this firsthand and share the story with you firsthand . But , as it is , I think it's a great learning opportunity for us for sure . Well , that's it for today . Folks , on behalf of the entire Safe Talk team , thanks for spending some time with us . I'm Danny Smith for Safe Talk with Safe Start , reminding all of us not to let the other folks' behavior , particularly behind the wheel , negatively impact yours . Have a great day .