BTW, I used to live just next to the old toll booth on I-90 on Mercer Island just before the floating bridge in Seattle. It had reversible lanes and there was a westbound onramp there. During eastbound rush hour the occasional car would enter there and, frustrated with the single slow lane, pull out into the reversible lane and have a medium to serious head-on with another car.
In summer of 1967, I was playing catch with my brother (I was between 6th and 7th grades at the time) and we heard a deafening “thud”. Yeah, there is a crash element, but a high speed head on has more of a “thud” sound. We were only about 100 feet from where the accident happened and climbed the embankment to see the cars. Six teenaged boys and girls were in a baracuda fastback and had floored it as they entered the freeway and immediately pulled out to head on squarely with an oncoming car. We got there less than a minute after the impact.
There were six faces drenched in red just above the dashboard. The window was gone and there was very little car in front of the dashboard. All eyes were closed at least. The didn’t feel a thing. That is a good thing.
It never slowed me down to this day. Life is risk. And to use an old corny line, “a life lived in fear is a life half lived.” Risk vs reward is a personal choice. But it is mature to consider the lives of those that may be impacted if your risk is realized.
It’s why, a few decades ago, my wife’s father refused to hire an airline pilot that bragged about flying a B-52 under the Golden Gate bridge.
It's certainly true that everything we do involves *some* risk.People *do* slip and fall in the shower,suffer a subdural hematoma (which often requires an ER physician to drill a hole in your skull within minutes of arrival) and,all too often,die.When calculating "risk to reward" for various activities a flight on a 747 for a vacation in Italy,certainly not *completely* devoid of serious risk,beats doing 139mph on I-95 in Connecticut in *my* book.Beats it by a country mile in fact.I travel I-95 between Greater Boston and NYC regularly and I promise you that doing so at 70mph should cause a reasonable person at least a bit of anxiety.
Any time you wish to hear war stories from the ER of a large hospital that involve unwise behavior (as opposed to heart attack,stroke and cancer patients) let me know.I've got a million of 'em.