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CAM is Chewing Gum.

CAM stands for “Complementary and Alternative Medicine,” and it is none of the above. CAM is to Health what chewing gum is to Diet.

Complementary, as CAM proponents would have us believe, means: “Completing; forming a complement,” or “Combining in such a way as to enhance or emphasize each other’s qualities.” What they would like us to believe is that these various nonscientific, evidence-free practices somehow complement actual medicine, when in truth, not only is medicine fine without them, but that in order for them to work, real medicine is necessary – making medicine the complement to CAM, not the other way around.

Chewing gum is not a complement to Diet in the same way. It adds nothing to a healthy, well-balanced diet in any nutritional sense, and provides no benefits whatsoever unless you are already meeting proper nutritional needs.

As a complement, chewing gum and CAM have a similar effect. If you’re attempting to lose weight or stave off hunger, a stick of gum creates an illusion of eating – the flavor and chewing motion stimulate the salivary glands, swallowing saliva puts some liquid in the stomach and creates a small amount of digestive activity, and mentally it provides a distraction from hunger. Sometimes hunger is emotional or triggered by habit or an outside stimulus, so chewing gum gives us something to do while we wait for the need to pass. Without the gum, this kind of hunger would pass on its own, but chewing the gum makes the waiting easier. We may think or fool ourselves into thinking that it’s actually responsible for the abatement of the hunger, but it’s really not.

CAM does the same thing. That is, it does nothing but give us the feeling that we’ve done something to help the problem and distracts us while we wait for it to resolve on its own.

As an alternative, they both fail completely, because chewing gum is no more a food than CAM is a medical treatment. As I just said, they let us put off eating or seeking medical help while hunger or illness resolve on their own, but not all hunger or illnesses do that. If we’re truly hungry and try to placate that hunger with chewing gum for long enough, we become more vulnerable to binge eating. We’ll eat whatever we come upon, whether it’s good for us or not, and eat more of it than we would have if we’d attended to our hunger properly from the start.

When CAM is used to treat an illness that doesn’t get better with time, we end up delaying the start of evidence-based, efficacious treatment, which means that we are much sicker and harder to cure than we would have been if we’d addressed the illness properly from the start.

As medicine, CAM is to it as gum is to food. Many forms of CAM rely on untestable elements, and those that can be examined in a clinical setting consistently perform no better than placebo. Chewing gum can be tested, and shows demonstrably negligible amounts of carbohydrates, and nothing else. Calling any type of CAM medicine is just as ludicrous as calling chewing gum food.

We don’t allow chewing gum to label itself as part of a well-balanced diet, so we should start coming down on practitioners of CAM who want to label their practices as medicine. Put up or shut up. The gum has a nutrition label. You want your stuff to be called medicine, show that it works like medicine. When the gum has the nutritional qualities of food, then they can call it food. When your modality has the evidence of medicine, then you can call it medicine. Until then, stop calling it that.

2011 12 04 Alison Rants
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Fuck Alternative Medicine.

I’ve held that in for a long time. For all the things I’ve said about it, there have been dozens that I haven’t, and I no longer feel obligated to tippy-toe around it. Fuck Alternative Medicine, its proponents, practitioners, and profiteers.

I’ve been told that I shouldn’t criticize because it somehow “works”. No, it doesn’t. Even setting aside the fact that not one single modality is capable of producing anything more than placebo effects, and that only in a clinical rather than a research setting, it doesn’t work. It keeps people focused on their problem by making them perform repetitive behaviors and thoughts that keep their attention on the problem. When the problem doesn’t go away, it makes them continue to put thought and effort into focusing on their problem for significantly more time than it would have taken to do something that would actually help solve their problem. So no matter how many qualifiers you put on it, it doesn’t work, so don’t tell me anymore that it does if you don’t want an argument.

I’ve been told that it’s important to its adherents to respect their right to believe in it. Fine. You have the right to believe whatever you want, but when it’s patently ridiculous, shown to have no basis in reality, or tested consistently false, I’m not going to respect your belief. Your right to believe something ridiculous, unreal, and false won’t be compromised, but you’ll have to accept that my disrespect of your belief has nothing to do with disrespect of your right to believe it. If you don’t want me to be disrespectful of your belief, don’t give me the opportunity.

I’ve been told that I’m unsympathetic or even cruel for expressing my disdain of this crap. I’ve been told that it’s so important to people’s senses of self-worth that any negativity I express towards the belief is tantamount to an attack on the person who holds it. Bull. Alcohol, recreational drugs, promiscuity, and any number of things that people do and claim they consciously choose to enjoy have a lot of parallels. If I tell you to lay off the sauce, go to rehab, or quit whatever else it is that’s not doing you any good, I’m not calling you names. If you believe some kind of crazy that sets you apart from other people, and I tell you it’s fake, I’m not calling you crazy. I’m saying this thing you’re doing, this thing you’re believing, is a big minus in your quality of life.

I’ve been told I’m close-minded for not entertaining the possibility of these things working. Well, my time and my neurons are both limited commodities. There are a lot of real things that are worth knowing and learning about, and I’m not going to toss those aside and make space in my schedule and my brain for pondering things that have no rational reason to be considered possible. They didn’t get closed out; they set foot inside and then got kicked out. Mind stays closed after that unless there’s a preponderance of evidence.

I will not pretend that there is even the slightest possibility that something that has no rational reason to work might somehow, someday, turn out to work. If it can’t be tested, it’s because there’s nothing to test. If people push it even though it can’t be tested, they can lie with impunity and pass the onus of its failure onto the consumer – as if he or she didn’t feel bad enough as it was. If you got sick, it’s not because you did or didn’t do something, and if you don’t get better, there had darned well be a reason other than not doing a ritual right or following a protocol to the letter. A doctor can tell you that a treatment or medication works or doesn’t work based on your condition, co-existing conditions, other medications, and work out a best-case plan, and alternatives. An alt-med practitioner can tell you you didn’t believe hard enough, or you must have done something wrong, but can’t even come close to reliably predicting outcomes. They’re making it up as they go along, using anecdotal evidence and confirmation bias to make it look like they know what they’re doing, but they don’t. What they do know is that they can tell people all kinds of crap, cover up failures with hand-waving and excuses, and still get their money.

I will not pretend that a belief should be treated with respect simply because it is held by someone who should be treated with respect. You can love and honor someone and still think they have an idea that’s batshit insane. And I think that the only people who benefit from Alternative Medicine are the people who are selling it – so buying into it is batshit insane. Did I say you were batshit insane? No, I did not. There’s a difference.

I will not feel bad about challenging your cherished belief if I can see the harm it’s doing. If you think I’m being mean for trying to steer you away from something that’s going to hurt you somehow, so be it. Keep it secret from me, or cut me out of your life. I’ll deal with it a lot better than holding my tongue and seeing the very aftermath I anticipated.

I will not pretend that there are possibilities when the overwhelming evidence shows there are not. I don’t take things at face value, and I feel that wishful thinking should just be a party game. Show me consistent, reproducible, predictable results that support your claim, and I’ll gladly admit I was wrong, but don’t ask me to indulge in magical thinking because it feels nicer than reality.

So from now on, I’ll deal with the backlash from speaking my mind, because being uncritical and respectful and sympathetic hasn’t helped. If I’d been forthcoming, either things would have turned out differently, or I’d have been ostracized and not known how they turned out.

I haven’t said it enough in the past, so I’ll be making up for lost time. Fuck Alternative Medicine, up, down, backwards, and sideways.

2011 11 22 Alison Rants
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The Fall of the American Empire?

I hope I’m being alarmist. I hope I’m unduly concerned. I hope that this all is just a hump we’ll get over after a few difficult years. What I’m thinking here is that there are people alive today who will witness the decline and fall of this country.

I was thinking pragmatically when I voted for Obama. I expected that he was not going to be able to live up to his promises, or find that his ideas were unrealistic once he was in office, and chose him not because I had any faith in him being the hope and change he promised, but because he was better than the alternative. I also expected that the GOP was going to continue to oppose any efforts of the Democrats and the Democratic Party regardless of their merit simply for the sake of opposing them. What I didn’t expect was that the President and what’s close to every elected Democrat in this country would cave to a slew of destructive Republican demands so that the Republicans would agree to one or two inconsequential concessions.

All I can see now is that both Obama’s budget proposal and the Republican cuts are going to fast-track our country into a third-world standard of living, if not actual third-world status. At first, all I objected to was the short-sightedness of politicians at all levels all around the country – did they not think about the greater implications of the changes they were proposing? Some ideas impacted quality of life by removing or restricting services, some by taking away funding or re-allocating it misguidedly. Bit by bit, the picture began to emerge that one side had a clear agenda for a new social structure, and the other had only a few pet ideas that it would half-heartedly defend.

Yes, a lot of things should be cut. A lot of programs spend more money than they should. A lot of programs don’t generate results that justify their budgets or their continued existence. Looking at a list, I can see some things that could be consolidated, managed better, or yes, even eliminated. What I don’t see, though, are cuts to things that could manage just fine without government assistance, like corporate welfare and tax credits, and tax structures that benefit the wealthiest individuals in the country. Instead, what’s being taken away in these proposals are programs that help those without the money or power to help themselves, or programs that protect them from abuse by the people and entities in power. Almost all the proposals coming to the table from both sides increase the gap between the haves and have nots, push the middle class and working poor closer to the latter category, and erode the quality of life for all those who can’t buy their own luxury and peace of mind.

At the state level here in NJ, we’re seeing this on a much more obvious level, since there are fewer places to hide waste and favoritism. When Governor Whitman eliminated state pension contributions in order to cover budget deficits, and then (of course) never quite got back to putting that money back (nor, to be fair, did Corzine) we of course ended up with not enough money to pay pension benefits to retiring state employees. Contrary to what politicians would like us to think, most of these employees are not lazing about the public trough, living easy at the cost of our tax dollars. The bad apples are held up as examples of how undeserving these people are, but the truth of the matter is that the ones who are getting hurt have worked hard, many of them dealing with the hardship of low wages in exchange for benefits, and have put in their time. They signed contracts that made specific legal promises, and planned their lives with those promises in mind. At retirement or close to retirement age, they should not have the rug pulled out from underneath them because someone else didn’t plan as well as they did.

At the same time, people higher up the food chain are not being asked to make the same sacrifices. Small pockets of outrage have erupted over double-dipping politicians, patronage jobs that pay six figures for showing up a few hours a week, and contracts that allow certain elected or appointed individuals to collect the full salary for their term of employment and keep generous retirement benefits even if they’re booted out early. The problem is, I think, that your average Joe who votes sees the “lazy government workers” in his daily life, is affected personally by the “bad kids produced by all the rotten schools and overpaid teachers,” knows people who “get off easy” or “get screwed over” by “corrupt cops”. . .ask anyone to provide examples of how any state or local employee is getting more than he deserves from our hard-earned tax dollars, and you’ll get tons of anecdotal evidence. Ask him what’s in the contract for his school superintendent, or how many duplicate jobs exist at the upper levels of state administration, and all you’ll get is a blank stare.

So rather than making good on the debt, Governor Christie comes out like a raging bull, demonizing public employees so that he can cut their salaries, benefits, and numbers with impunity, and further the disconnect between budget problems and excess at the higher levels. Not only does he effectively swell the ranks of the poor and impoverished, but he also proposes cuts to things that benefit all of us. Public programs that house the mentally ill will lose funding, putting more of them out homeless on our streets – your streets, if you don’t live in a gated community. Funding cuts for schools that result in fewer and less qualified teachers and fewer extracurricular opportunities will give us bored, uneducated, disaffected young people, rather than future leaders who contribute to society – the kids down the street will be robbing and vandalizing your house rather than, say, shoveling your driveway or watching your kids, because what else is there for them to do? And if you call the cops after they do this (or the fire department, if they get a little too enthusiastic) you’re going to have to accept that they might not be able to get there, sorry, because they’re understaffed and haven’t been able to afford to fix some of the broken equipment.

Open spaces aren’t being preserved, so if you don’t own your own pristine recreational acreage, you’d better be happy with the view out your window. Other agencies and organizations that preserve history or provide recreational opportunities are closing up shop, so the field trips that got students excited about learning just won’t happen, and you’ll have to come up with your own ideas for things to do with the family on weekends. Yahtzee and Monopoly will wear thin pretty quickly, and you won’t be able to go to the local library, because the special programs will be gone and the hours will be cut, if it even manages to stay open.

Horse racing, however you feel about it, takes up a lot of space and doesn’t contribute as much as casinos, so the entire equestrian industry in the state is taking a hit. You might not think much about it, but once those horse farms become new housing developments, it’ll be too late to realize you didn’t want to lose them.

And speaking of casinos, you get to buy those whether you like it or not. Revel paved the way – they began construction and then threatened to leave the rotting hulk if they didn’t get the funding and tax breaks they wanted. New Jersey caved on that. Since you paid for it, you should probably go visit it. While you’re there, take a tour of the sparkling gem that is Atlantic City. The casinos got incentives and breaks from the state because they promised to give back – specifically to the town in which they operated. What you actually see, though, is a microcosm of our future as planned by lockstep Republicans and weak-kneed Democrats. The haves – the casinos with their flaunted wealth, taking in money from working people and keeping most of it through special arrangements and creative accounting, and the have-nots – the people of AC, most of them at or below the poverty line, in decrepit housing with inadequate public services, whose future generations will not have received the education or assistance to rise above it and make a better life for themselves or their families. Keep your car windows rolled up and your doors locked, and don’t depend on the police showing up if you need them.

As Atlantic City is a smaller version of what may await us as a state, it is also a smaller version of where our country may be headed if the budgetary efforts to increase the class divide succeed. Nothing anyone has done has been able to counteract or slow this process in that city. If that’s what happens on a local scale, I don’t have high hopes that it will be different in a state or regional or national level.

2011 02 16 Alison General
Politics
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Dealing with an ADD-C Adult.

Yeah, this is me. Your mileage may vary. ADD is a spectrum disorder, which means some people might not even know they have it, and others will never do well at supporting or caring for themselves. It rarely travels alone, so you’ll find a lot of ADDers who are depressed or bipolar, have dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalcula, or even autism spectrum disorder. It’s also a collection of symptoms that are divided into hyperactivity, inattention, and impulsivity. You need to have at least six of the symptoms in two or more of the categories, and it has to be disabling in two or more environments. Depending on the distribution, you can be ADHD (hyperactive), ADD-PI (primarily inattentive) or ADD-C (combined – neither primarily hyperactive nor primarily inattentive.) So we’re not all the same, but no matter what, it’s no walk in the park.

Children nowadays get diagnosed early enough that they can be helped behaviorally and/or pharmaceutically, but most of us in the over-30 age group made a lot of mistakes, failed at tons of things, lost friends and spouses and jobs, and couldn’t figure out why or how to stop doing it all over again. Because when we were young, if we were diagnosed at all, the whole of the problem was being hyperactive, and the accepted wisdom was that we’d outgrow it. All the other stuff that we now know is integral to ADD, for us, was character flaws. Lots of emotional baggage. So it’s a good thing to know how and why you’re different so you can figure out what you can and can’t change, and stop beating yourself up when you fail at trying to change that second one all the time.

It’s really hard to explain what it’s like to live with an ADD brain for a lot of reasons. If you have ADD, you lose count of all the times you’ve tried and been told things like “oh, everyone loses their keys,” or “that’s just an excuse for being lazy.” If you live with someone who has ADD, it can drive you nuts when it seems like you’re speaking a different language to each other and everything’s in constant chaos.

So I’m going to explain what it’s like for me, and a few things that make it easier to be like me or live with someone like me. More below the fold. Continue reading ›

2010 09 13 Alison General Comments (0) Permalink

Nebraska Abortion Laws FAIL

So, Nebraska has passed a couple of laws to ban abortions. I cannot believe how patently ridiculous and short-sighted they are. Strike that, I can. Behind each and every law passed to restrict abortion is the religious intent to punish women for having sex. No other thought process would allow people to pass these laws completely ignorant of their consequences and outright irony.

For example. . .the first one “bars the procedure at and after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the assertion that fetuses can feel pain at that point.” So, after 20 weeks, an ultrasound and/or genetic testing determines that the child has, let’s say, a severe case of spina bifida or a congenital heart defect. As soon as the child is born, it will be whisked into surgery, and hooked up to tubes and wires. As soon as it has healed from that surgery, it will probably face more surgeries, quite possibly a lifetime of surgeries. If it survives, it will live a life full of pain. If it does not survive, which a doctor looking at the prenatal testing results would be able to predict with some accuracy, it will have lived its entire brief life in pain. So in what way does this bill show a merciful compassion for a freedom from pain? Late-term abortions are painless, since they are induced by anesthetic injected into the fetus. Just the way a merciful vet puts our pets to sleep – one shot to put the animal to sleep, a second to stop the heart. How is that more painful?

The second “requires women be screened before having abortions for mental health issues and other risk factors indicating if they might have problems afterward.” So, if it looks like a woman is so mentally fragile that she might flip out and go postal after an abortion, she’s a perfect candidate for motherhood. I sure as heck don’t want to be living in Nebraska about 15 years from now, because it’s going to be full of teenagers who were raised by mentally unstable women who didn’t want them in the first place.

Way to go, Nebraska!

2010 04 14 Alison Rants Comments (0) Permalink

My Depression Poem

I can feel the cloud envelop me.
Do not tell me to cheer up-
I have no limbs, but you ask me to fly.
Would you command
a dead man
to breathe?

Do not remind me of my blessings –
to have such wonderful things in my life
and still feel no joy
makes me
ungrateful.

Do not tell me I am beautiful;
that you love me;
I feel ugly and unworthy of love.
When you tell me these things
either I have tricked you into seeing me
as something I am not
or you
are lying to me
which
is
worse

Do not tell me anything.
Just take me to the doctor
and get me
my damn
meds.

2010 03 09 Alison General Comments (0) Permalink

Thoughts on Stalkers!

I recently purchased “The Narrow Stairs” by Death Cab for Cutie, so I’ve been listening to “I Will Possess Your Heart,” and revisiting why it creeps me out (even though I like the song.) In the same vein, this appeared on Emails From Crazy People. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

When the song first came out, I was shot down for finding it a creepy-stalker song. Some of the comments on EFCP reflect the same attitude towards the protagonists of both the song and the note – aww, poor guy, too shy to tell the girl he loves her face to face. . .NONONONONO!!! Wrong! Yes, there is definitely social ineptitude there, but there’s a fine line between not knowing the right way to tell someone you like her (or him) and making yourself frightening to that person. I realized that one of the reasons I heard the alarms going off in my head is that I actually have been stalked, on more than one occasion, and I didn’t find it sweet or romantic in any way. If you’ve experienced it yourself, or known someone who had, you would not call the stalker “sweet” or “shy” or “romantic.”

For purposes of brevity, I’m going to use the masculine pronouns here. It’s not that women are never stalkers (just ask David Letterman, for one) but that I’m relating it to my own experience, and because male stalkers are more commonly known. Here is why stalking is ALWAYS creepy:

The stalker is either someone you have already rejected (check out those song lyrics) or someone you would reject (the stalker knows this, which is why the approach is indirect.) He is not some shy, hopeless romantic. . .he is strange, and the strangeness evident in his stalking behavior only scratches the surface of his strangeness.

He knows you will reject him, or have, but is convinced that all he needs to do is back you into a corner, capture you, or confine you until Stockholm Syndrome kicks in. Does this work for anything? Would any sane person, after being held prisoner mentally, emotionally, or physically, ever decide that her captor/tormentor was really the love of her life? No, that would happen only after her sanity had been compromised, and her escape options had run out.

He sees you as an object. He sees you as a possession. He sees you as Galatea to his Pygmalion – a lump of clay to be carved and perfected until you fit his purpose. Your individuality, your thoughts and feelings, your sense of self-worth are all subordinate to his idea of who you should be. He has already figured out who you are and how you will fit into his life, even if the closest he’s ever been to you is fifty feet away. He doesn’t know who you really are, and doesn’t care – his mind is made up. A healthy relationship involves compromise, but what he’s looking for involves none whatsoever on his part.

He’s STALKING you! He may be outside your window while you’re sleeping. He may be following you on your errands. He may be sitting outside your office ALL DAY LONG. No matter where you go or what you do, you never know if you’re being watched from a distance. If it goes on long enough, he may come indoors, speak with other people you know about you, even break into your home (because he knows you’d never actually let him in.) His stalking behavior can very easily become threatening or dangerous. Ronald Reagan and John Lennon were both shot by stalkers. Many kidnappings were preceded by stalking. Notes from stalkers often contain escalating threats over time. A normal person would not imagine that implying dire consequences would cause another person to change her mind about loving him, but a stalker would, and often does. He will kill or hurt someone to make you love him. He will break into your home and steal things to show you the depth of his affection. He might even do things to hurt himself and tell you about them so that you know what YOU are doing to HIM by not responding to his advances.

Someone who is sweet and shy and romantic is harmless, and might indeed get the girl of his dreams based on his virtues and patience. The stalker is not harmless. He is not sweet. He is not shy. He is not romantic. There is nothing positive about his actions. He is a stalker, and he is creepy. A song about a stalker is creepy because stalkers are creepy. He might not think so, but we all should know better.

2010 01 25 Alison General
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How to Not Fall Asleep.

I am so tired of not sleeping. I’m so tired of seeing information on the internet about fixing sleep problems – it’s so simplistic, and doesn’t apply to me at all. I’m really tired of sleep medications that end up costing me even more sleep than I’ve already lost.

I’m trembling all over, feeling woozy, hung over, flu-ish. I hurt myself this afternoon because the exhaustion has made me so uncoordinated. Knocked a container off the refrigerator shelf because my hand missed what I was reaching for, slammed my other hand into the refrigerator door trying to catch it and missing broadly. The obvious solution is a nap, so I set aside an hour and a half. It went much the way my nighttime sleep did, and in my frustration, I decided to write a little chronicle.

I’m trying a little relaxation/meditation technique that involves picturing yourself as a hollow vessel, slowly filling with a warm orange liquid from toes up to head, then slowly draining back down. Very effective, according to sleep experts.

Slowly, the warm liquid fills up the toes of your feet. The big toes, the smaller toes, and then you feel the balls of your feet, then the arches, slowly filling you with warmth and calm.

I think the high pitched buzz in my head is a C. Maybe one day I’ll check to see.

Feel the warmth in your feet as the liquid fills your heels, then your ankles.

God, I hate this pounding and whooshing of my pulse in the right side of my neck and head. Whoosh/pound – whoosh/pound – whoosh/pound. . .why only on the right? Why did it start up again? It’s not the sleep meds, because it started two days ago. Maybe the feeling like someone’s plunging a sharp pencil into my right ear is from the sleep meds, though.

Feel the warmth in your feet – wait, did that. The liquid begins to fill your calves. It rises slowly, inch by inch. You feel warm and calm and peaceful.

I’m thinking of a song that was playing on the radio in Physical Therapy. Do I own that CD? The CDs are organized, the books used to be, but now I’m taking them down so we can move the shelves. Audrey’s going to the library tonight, maybe this time I’ll finally go and drop off some books for donation there. That room is such a mess.

The warm liquid rises up into your knees. Feel them relax, and then feel it begin to fill your thighs.

Hot flash. Throw off the covers. Damn dog is clanking her collar on the wood floor. Why can’t the damn dog sleep on a rug? Why does the damn dog have to sleep right in the doorway whenever I’m trying to nap? Why don’t I ever remember to take the damn dog’s collar off when I lie down for a nap? Now I’m cold. Bundle up again.

Where was I? Crap. Feel the warm liquid fill your. . .ankles? Oh, knees. Knees. Now feel it begin to fill your thighs. Feel the calming warmth spreading through your body.

Am I ever going to have the energy to finish that room? I haven’t even hemmed the curtains, now I need to take them down so I can paint. All the fabric to hang so I can start sewing again. I wonder which bag has the polar fleece? I’m hearing a Jonathan Coulton song now. I should download a few more of his tracks. But I never finished learning to play Skullcrusher Mountain, even after I transposed it into A.

The warm liquid begins to fill your pelvis. Feel the warmth entering your abdomen, filling you with peace and relaxation. . .

I have to remember to read last month’s minutes before Thursday. I should finish filling out the voucher, too, and I never did make up those forms and reports in Access. The leftover supplies are in a bag in the kitchen next to the stuff I want to Freecycle. I should do that and get them out of the way. Once they’re gone, it’ll be easier to wash the floor. This stupid medication didn’t help me sleep, I’m so tired. I could get all this stuff done if I weren’t such a zombie.

Feel the warm liquid rise up past your navel, up towards your ribs. . .

Time to get up!!!

2010 01 20 Alison ADD
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Audrey Drew us Christmas Presents!

She drew this Dalek for her Dad

She drew this Dalek for her Dad


Haseo is Carolyn's birthday present, too.

Haseo is Carolyn's birthday present, too.

Jigglypuff for me, all ready to draw on people's faces!

Jigglypuff for me, all ready to draw on people's faces!

2009 12 25 Alison General Comments (1) Permalink

Don’t Drive Like an Idiot!!!

I’ve complained about this before, but I’m hoping that my message here will get spread around a little more now that my tiny blog is linked to facebook. Every time I get in the car, I narrowly avoid getting creamed by people who don’t know how to drive – and I think part of it comes from not knowing why they should be following certain rules, or why those rules exist. Let me start with the text, then follow with the semi-nifty graphics.

1. USE YOUR TURN SIGNAL!!! The law here in NJ is that you signal at least 100 feet before turning or changing lanes. The purpose of your signal is to let other drivers know what you are about to do. The turn signal is not a reminder to yourself of what you’re going to do, and it’s useless if you wait to use it until you’ve already started to move. If you are changing lanes and you signal well before doing so, drivers in that lane will know not to speed up (one would hope) or honk their horns to let you know they’re there (in case you don’t see them in your blind spot.) If you are turning, people behind you won’t run up your tail, not knowing why you’re slowing down, and you’ll also save someone who’s waiting for a break in traffic a lot of irritation (how many times have you lost an opportunity to turn into a break in traffic because you didn’t know a driver was turning until more traffic started coming?) Nobody can read your mind! Signal! It’s one of your car’s most important safety features!

2. TURN ON YOUR HEADLIGHTS!!! We have a useless law here, wipers on/headlights on. People ignore it because they don’t understand why. They figure that they can see just fine, so they don’t need their headlights. IT’S NOT ABOUT THE DRIVER BEING ABLE TO SEE! Sorry for so many caps, but yes, I’m screaming in my head as I type this. The human eye loses up to 20% of its ability to detect motion in dim light, which means that it’s more difficult for other drivers to see you if you don’t have your headlights on. If it’s dawn, dusk, raining, snowing, foggy, anything other than full daylight, you can be tooling along and be completely invisible to another driver until it’s too late to avoid an accident. If you don’t have your headlights on, it’s your fault, not the other driver’s, because YOU ARE INVISIBLE!

3. PARK HEAD-IN!!! This has more to do with pulling out of the parking space than pulling into it. You see, when you back out of a parking space, your reverse lights turn on. Pedestrians and other drivers will see those lights and know that you are about to move out into the driving lanes. They will be able to avoid hitting you or being hit by you. They have no such warning if you are parked facing out. As a corollary, if you are driving in a parking lot and see the reverse lights on a parked car, yield. The driver can’t really see until his windows are past the cabs of the cars to either side of him, so you can see him well before he can see you. Don’t drive on the left side and zip around him, that’s an a**hole move that endangers everyone around. And if you’re the one pulling out, do it slowly enough that other drivers and pedestrians have time to react.

4. DON’T CUT CORNERS WHEN YOU TURN LEFT!!! This one is practically de rigeur in Toms River, and I’m surprised there aren’t more accidents caused by it than there are. Cue semi-nifty graphics:
wrong way to turn

right way to turn

5. DON’T RUN THE LIGHT!!! Up north, people jump the green, which is a problem in and of itself. Down here, though, they don’t slow down for yellow – or sometimes, even red. That’s bad, but it’s worse when there are drivers caught in the intersection waiting to turn. To wit:
don't run the yellow 1

don't run the yellow 2

There are more – there are always more – but these are the most common, and most easily avoidable mistakes that people seem to make. I feel far more endangered from these than from most of the idiotic things people do on highways, because there’s so little time to react and so few ways to avoid drivers who do these things. So stop doing them. Right now. Just stop. Please.

2009 12 01 Alison Driving Comments (0) Permalink