Are you a car user or driver? The difference could save your life on Whatcom roads

This is the last of a six-part series by The Bellingham Herald examining Whatcom County’s vehicle crash fatalities and how every driver can play a role in reducing those numbers.

In baseball there’s an old axiom about the difference between pitchers and throwers.

While a thrower will get on the mound and simply bring heat all day, trying to overpower every batter and strike them out by blowing the ball past them, a pitcher takes a more cerebral and strategic approach to the game, actively thinking about how each pitch sets up the next, moving the ball in, out, up and down in the strike zone and changing speeds to take advantage of a hitter’s weaknesses. It’s like the difference between playing checkers and chess.

Washington Traffic Safety Commission Target Zero manager for Region 11 Doug Dahl says he sees a similar difference when it comes to using a vehicle vs. actually driving one, and understanding that could be key to helping reduce the number of fatal crashes that occur in Whatcom County and starting to approach the target number of zero.

“What we need is not car users,” Dahl told The Bellingham Herald in a September interview, “we need drivers — people who look at driving as a skill to be developed, honed and maintained, rather than just some tool to use to hurtle down the road at 70 mph with two tons of steel.”

Dahl said the state is actively rewriting the driver’s education curriculum to not only include knowing the rules of the road, but also teach new drivers how to evaluate their own driving habits and their mental state when they’re driving.

“Right now, that’s non-existent in drivers ed,” Dahl said. “We want to really encourage people to take a more conscious approach to driving.”

But what Dahl would like to see most is a cultural shift in the way we all approach driving.

In his eyes, driving is not a right we’re all granted on our 16th birthday — it’s a privilege, and each of us has the responsibility to respect our role in keeping everyone on the road safe.

“One of the things we talk about at the Traffic Safety Commission and I feel pretty strongly about is how you drive is part of the citizen you are in the community,” Dahl told The Herald. “Being a good citizen includes being a good driver. We have begun to look at it like good traffic citizenship, not just as something where I have to get where I’m going as quick as I can.

“We too often think about driving as an individual activity, but if you were to get up in a drone or a helicopter or whatever and look down at our city, you’d see driving is a very collective activity. It’s like cogs in a gear.”

So, how do each of us become good citizen drivers, cyclists and pedestrians and keep from throwing a wrench into the gears of what should be a well-oiled machine? How do each of us keep from being included in the crash or fatality statistics?

We all know we shouldn’t speed, we shouldn’t talk on the phone or text while we drive, we shouldn’t drive impaired — we shouldn’t break the rules.

Beyond that, Dahl offers these suggestions for each of us to consider when we sit behind the wheel, hop on a bike or walk along a city street:

▪ How big is your ego? “It seems we’re so ego driven when we’re in the car — ‘I can’t believe he’d pull in front of me like that’ — it’s that mindset. In reality, why do we let stuff like that bother us? If somebody changes lanes in front of you, just back off. What is the two to three seconds really going to cost you vs. what could tailgating that guy to get your point across cost you?”

▪ What’s your hurry? “For some reason when we get behind the wheel we get what I call this ‘Race Car Mentality.’ We’re always pushing to get there faster. If we get behind somebody on a bicycle, it seems like they’re holding us up forever, even though it’s only 15 or 20 seconds. What is 15 or 20 seconds really going to cost you? The risk vs. the reward sometimes isn’t worth the chances we take.”

▪ What’s your priority? “Too often, we allow driving to become a secondary activity. I think most people who are involved in crashes are good people who make bad decisions. ... Nobody sets out to crash their car on their way to work, but do they make it enough of a priority to make sure they don’t? Is driving the most important thing they’re doing? Make sure you don’t put your mind in neutral when the car is in gear.”

▪ Whose side are you on? “Studies have shown that at any given time, 90 percent of drivers are paying attention to what’s going on and are following the rules. That means that about 10 percent of drivers are distracted by something, which is still way too high. When it comes to impairment, those numbers are even less — maybe about one percent. I think it’s important for drivers to realize most drivers are following the rules.”