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Tuesday, October 31 2006, 8:49 PM
While driving in the high country be careful
While traveling the high country in Yosemite we need to remember to drive safe at all times and stay on the lookout as animals run onto the road without notice. Remember this is their house, not ours. It is bad enough as narrow as the roads are with nowhere to swerve out of the way if a animal did run onto the road, not to mention no side barriers which at that point you will have to hit the animal head on or risk going over the side of a cliff by trying to swerve. I think you will do better hitting a deer then tumbling down a cliff, but hey that is only my opinion and what do I know ;)
What brought this to my mind was driving home tonight from a late afternoon of photographing in the high country, these two tourist from Germany were in a car accident. They hit a dear head on and their car seemed to be totaled. Luckily they were ok and just shaken up a bit, they were indeed lucky. To many times while driving these roads I see people speeding by me at 60,70 or 80 miles per hour or worse yet passing on these two lanes roads at night over the double yellow line or a blind corner at night, if they only realized the danger in doing this, as they are not only risking their own life but others as well.
I know when we see these slow speed limits posted we feel impatient by having to drive these slow enforced speeds as we just want to get home after a long day. But, after seeing what happened today, it is definitely a wake up call to keep at the posted speed as you have a better chance of missing an accident completely. Could you imagine what the outcome could have been if they were speeding? Someone could have been severely hurt or worse yet, killed. The front end of the car was totaled and mind you, they were driving the speed limit. I would hate to see someone hit one of these deer at 60 or 70. If you really sit and think about it, do you really save any time by driving 65 when the speed limit is 45 MPH over the coarse of say 50 miles? Not really, so to me it just isn’t worth the risk.
Just please be safe while traveling these roads and keep on the look out for deer jump out of nowhere right in front while driving in the mountains.
As one of the guys that stopped to help said, “There are two kinds of drivers in the mountains, those that have hit a deer before and those that are going to hit one”. In other words, be safe, stay alert and if you get too tired drive or impatient pull over and take a break so something like this doesn’t happen to you.
So please, be safe, stay alert and drive the speed limit as their s a reason for it and not just to irritate us trying to get from A to B.
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