Recently, tragic car accidents caused by elderly drivers seem to be increasing.
I am in shock whenever I see the videos recorded on drive recorders, shown on the TV news shows, as I somehow feel like I am the one involved in the accident.
Reasons are likely to be mistakes in stepping down accelerators instead of breaks, or from seizures, etc. In our Senju family, everyone drove as though it was something obvious to do.
I grew up, sitting in the passenger seat of the car, driven by my parents and as I was so used to it, I felt like I was driving by myself. My father used to love driving and often said that he wanted to be a car racer if he was born again, and my mother drove me to various concert halls from school, even to venues as far as 200 kilometers away and back home again. Both were very good drivers and never had a single accident. Both my brothers got their driving licenses from when they were students and were also good drivers.
With all due respect, I am confident with my driving skills and I do love driving.
However, there must have been people who were actually good drivers and were confident with their driving skills amongst the people who caused car accidents. Not only with the elderly people but in all age groups and such negligence may have led to major accidents.
Such accidents can happen to anyone.
When you are on the wheels, tired and worrying about something, anyone can forget for an instant, that they are capable of turning themselves into offensive weapons with your hands on the wheels and right foots on the accelerators.
It is terrifying, when you think about it.
One needs to hold on to the wheels by pulling yourself together.
Even if you switch to taking taxis instead of driving by yourself, you cannot avoid accidents caused by others.
And how about the recent autonomous ,self-driving cars?
From now towards the future, the era of self-driving trains and cars, controlled by computers
have already started. Am I the only one feeling dubious about it?
I cannot think it is completely safe to trust and leave it to the computer 100%.
And just when I was thinking about it, I heard the news of the troubles on the train which was driven autonomously and was meant to be safe. According to specialists, such autonomously driven trains could be at risk of being remote controlled from a faraway place and could lead to crimes.
It is likely that something important is being missed out because people are obsessed in longing for something more convenient.
As for myself, I do not like smart phones and still use a feature phone but recently, I was made to change my feature phone into a so called “Gala-Phone” which is something like a hybrid
mixture of a smart phone and a feature phone, which looks like a feature phone but has the same functions as a smart phone. I said I didn’t need such a thing and asked for a simple feature phone but was told that they were no longer manufactured.
By the introduction of the G5 technology, the radio wave for feature phones will no longer be used. Reluctantly, I am now using the “Gala-phone”.
I feel that the world being too convenient could steal away the senses of human being to live in a human-like way.