THERE used to be a time when motorists were driving for everyone else whenever they got behind the wheel.
These days though, it seems like everyone is driving for themselves.
Everyone is in a rush, and with that comes mistakes and risk-taking.
More and more we are seeing footage of crashes that could have been easily avoided just by simply slowing down and paying attention to surroundings.
Dashcams, and the popularity of Facebook pages like Dashcams Adelaide, have contributed to that.
Last week there were horrifying scenes at Calton Rd following a two car collision which left one vehicle on its side, the passenger side of another completely torn apart and debris strewn all across the road.
Fortunately all involved managed to walk away with non-life threatening injuries, but it easily could have been worse.
Investigations into the crash are continuing, but the indications are that one of the vehicles failed to give way.
As a result, Gawler Police will focus on driver distraction and driver inattention throughout the rest of the month.
Previously, The Bunyip has reported that these offences are the most common of the fatal five in the Gawler, Two Wells and Mallala area.
As Gawler’s top cop Senior Sergeant Rob Mowday says in today’s edition (Driver inattention in spotlight, P7), this crash serves as a reminder to local road users “to pay attention on the roads at all times, as we could have lost lives in this incident”.
It begs the question, at what point is the message going to sink in?
With each year comes a new road safety campaign and still the road toll remains too high.
Last year there were 71 fatalities on South Australian.
Before that 99, and before that 93.
About 20 years ago the road toll was consistently in triple digits, including a shocking 147 in 2005.
This year alone there has been 6 fatalities and 40 crashes leading to serious injury.
So at what point do we slow down, stop taking risks and start paying attention?
