economicmultipliers_133

Economic Multipliers (133)

Do you know what these are?

They help CREATE wealth in systems.

Speed is not always an economic multiplier.

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When three teenagers got killed recently in an automobile accident, I wondered whether it could have been prevented.

If you came upon a car that was waiting to make a left hand turn into a driveway, would you slow down and stop behind the car until it had a chance to turn?

Or, would you take the shoulder of the road and drive around it?

Would you be going slow enough to even stop when the car in front of you did?

If you took the shoulder, lost control and then veered into oncoming traffic, your choice could affect a lot of people.

As a pedestrian in a crosswalk this past summer, I got hit by a 16-year-old in a pickup truck. At a roundabout on a clear day with the sun behind him, the driver had two crosswalks to slow down and possibly stop for. I was in the second. He even had two lanes he could be in. I was only in one.

The driver swerved partially into the second lane. That swerve would have missed me. Then he swerved back (I surmise he realized he would hit some oncoming cars in lanes 3 and 4 because he wasn’t fully in control of the vehicle).

I was told that speed is not calculated unless you are a fatality.

He backed up, drove around me, parked and ran back to apologize. By that point, I was trying to figure out whether I could move so I could get out of the road and not get hit again.

More than three months after the accident (the injuries are recoverable fortunately), I am still doing 3+ hours of therapy a day (and now need a therapist), still can’t walk down steps like most people do, still have a visible dent in one arm (it’s going away but if a car ever hits you and you get injured, you’ll probably find out what the word hematoma means) and am living a modified life in slow motion until everything heals (with a lot of things not getting done or temporarily getting done by someone else).

I’ve been amazed by the number of individuals I’ve run into who have had similar and many times much more severe injuries. A relative even said that I was ‘lucky!’

The day that I got hit, I was heading home from grocery shopping.

I don’t know where the 16-year-old was headed to or coming from. I was told that his truck didn’t even get dented.

The 16-year-old didn’t get a speeding ticket (inattentive driving).

I know though, that if he had been going slower, he would have had more choices and I wouldn’t have gotten hit.

You can’t take back an accident.

You can’t give back time or a life.

You can slow down.

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Numerous individuals stopped to help. A woman with a boat parked so I wouldn’t get hit again. Another woman gave me an ice pack and gauze. Several asked if they could call anyone. Some individuals helped me to the curb.

In hindsight, given the injuries I did not know I had at the time (adrenaline acts as a painkiller I’ve been told), I’d recommend to anyone hit that they not move and wait until medical personnel arrive if they are able to (I wasn’t even aware that a baseball-sized hematoma was forming on my arm until someone told me). And, after the fact (since bruises can show up several days after hematomas do), if your bruises can tell medical personnel how you got hit (and how your body got injured), take photos. The bruising goes away much quicker than the ‘dents’ do.

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I thank all of you who stopped to help and/or have been saying prayers for a quick recovery.