NOTING the red light ahead, I brake to a stop behind one of those lumbering street-sweeper trucks, its brush bristles whirring ominously. As the signal turns green, the overgrown vacuum cleaner starts to creep forward, albeit a little too slowly for my tastes. "Oh, hurry up," I mutter under my breath. Driving home the point: Motorist, beware
Suddenly, it lurches to a stop. A flimsy-looking compact car shoots across the Makiki intersection. Driven by a young man, it careens through the red light and narrowly misses the street-sweeper.
As the young driver passes, his face turns toward us and a series of expressions pass across his face. First, he seems shocked at nearly broadsiding someone. Then, he appears angry. Finally, glancing in the rear view mirror at the red light he has just ignored, he looks scared. The realization hits: Traveling at his rate of speed toward a target as solid as the street-sweeper, the impact almost certainly would have flattened him.
Near-misses such as this - and the two head-on car crashes this week near Kapolei and in Kalaheo, Kauai, that killed a total of seven people - drive home a terrifying point: It's dangerous out there on the streets.
Oahu's Joseph Nuuanu can testify to that. On Tuesday, he saw the deadly automobile accident on Farrington Highway that claimed the lives of two of his three daughters and his one-year-old grandchild. He was following his family members in another vehicle when a red convertible veered over the center line and crashed directly into his daughter's silver Honda.
Despite being in shock at the scene, Nuuanu did a remarkable thing. He walked over to newspaper and TV reporters, wearing a patchwork blanket as a shawl and his eyes brimming with tears, and asked everybody, everywhere, to please drive more carefully.
What a magnanimous gesture. This broken man had just witnessed a parent's worst nightmare - seeing his offspring suffer violent, untimely deaths. Yet Nuuanu had the compassion and motivation to want to warn others, so that they would not experience or inflict his own numbing pain.
If there is any silver lining to this cloud of tragedy, it is this: The impact of someone else's misfortune is often a wake-up call for the rest of us. One person's misery is another person's warning.
Maybe it will result in somebody else driving more slowly or not drinking before getting behind the wheel.
Maybe it will motivate someone who usually doesn't to buckle up or to strap a keiki securely into a child safety seat.
Maybe it will cause motorists to look both ways before accelerating into an intersection, instead of automatically lunging forward because the light has turned green.
The life you save may be your own.
SEVEN people died in Hawaii this week, wrongly assuming that they were safe because they were snugly encased in several thousand pounds of moving steel and glass. Yet their demise and the plea of Joseph Nuuanu, asking all of us to drive more responsibly, are a reminder that an automobile is not just a way to travel. It is potentially a lethal and irrevocable weapon.
This past week has changed my perspective on the responsibility and privilege of owning a driver's license. So what if the other guy is at fault if you are dead right?
Since we can't control how others motor around town, defensive driving is the way to go. No longer will I curse at street-sweepers.