A regular occurrence on my runs are people who roar past me in their vehicles with excessive speed.  Only a handful of times have I caught back up to them - results always bad.  The motorcycle incidents were the worst.  Yesterday a couple of rice burners burned by me.  About fifteen minutes later I come up on these same vehicles parked on the side of the road.  Great, I think.  The people alongside look at me approach with that guilty, embarrassed, pitiful look on their face that has been the exact same look in every such incident. There were three of these rice burners.  Where is the other one?  I slow down to a slight trot.  Ah, there it is, ten feet into the woods lodged amongst those trees.  Great.

"What road is this?" I am asked by a woman on a phone.

"Lime Creek," I respond.

An Asian guy alongside the treeborne car looks at me and says, "Something ran out in the road.  Is there a lot of wildlife out here?"

"Yes there is a lot of wildlife out here," I say.  But my tone conveys a message more like, "Right, this wreck has everything to do with the wildlife out here and nothing at all to do with the fact that you were roaring 65 miles an hour around that 35 mile an hour downhill curve."

I walk closer to the car and then stop.  I'm about to ask if there is someone inside.  But I already know the answer to that question. Then I'm about to ask if there is anything I can do to help.  I look at them, their concern, their numbers, their cellphones.  No, there is nothing that I can do here to help.  And I don't want to know the state of this guy.  The state of the car is enough information.  So I turn and without saying anything more I start up again, left only with a feeling of anger at people and the irritability that comes from having to stop during a long run.

Ever since my close friend was killed in a car wreck I've harbored a loathing for automobiles.  I've paid more attention to them.  It is surely one of the most dangerous things we do, drive automobiles. Yes, putting human beings, who for this purpose most definitively ALL have Attention Deficit Disorder, in the operation of hurling tons of metal is one of the most dangerous things we face.  But that's not what bothers me; of course we won't stop driving cars.  What bothers me is that few people acknowledge the danger.  Everybody takes it for granted until someone you know gets hurt.  What bothers me is that few people respect the danger of driving cars.  What bothers me is not that it IS Russian roulette, but that few people act like or even know they are playing.

Perhaps the only thing to be taken away from this is that there is no substitute for personal experience.