Anyone who has seen the dash cam footage of a near miss on the Murray Valley Highway recently would have to be shocked and even frightened at the levels of stupidity on our roads.
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Is it any wonder our road toll is on the rise with idiots who think it is acceptable to attempt to overtake two trucks - on double lines - on a single-lane country highway. It really is a miracle that no one was killed.
The foolish person, who was driving a Sureway Employment and Training company car, narrowly avoided an oncoming ute, swerving onto the side of the road. Fortunately for the driver, there wasn't a big tree in the way, and he or she didn't kill themselves, or worse, a completely innocent family coming the other way.
Police often say there is no such thing as an "accident", and that is right. There are consequences to the behaviours we choose and the decisions we make on the road, and it was only good luck that the consequences of this driver's actions weren't deadly. Sometimes we just make mistakes, because we are all human.
But sometimes, we encounter people with no regard for their safety or that of anyone else, people who believe that they don't have to wait behind a couple of slow old trucks, and that those double lines that forbid overpassing - well, those rules just don't apply to them.
The feedback after The Border Mail shared the footage on Friday has been that this kind of behaviour is all too often seen on our roads, most often observed by the truck drivers who arguably know our roads best and who, in many cases, have dash cams that record the evidence.
After all, if you just told someone that you saw a driver attempt to overtake two trucks on double lines on a single-lane country highway, the response from your mates might well be, "na, no one is that stupid".
Sadly, the aftermath of this sort of driving can be absolutely catastrophic. You only have to speak to our emergency service workers to get an idea of the kind of carnage that is left behind. It can only be hoped this driver is caught and charged, and that the severity of any driving ban is equal to the severity of the stupidity involved.
