Drive Wrong

Based on the results of my driving test, I am the greatest single threat to human safety since Ebola Zaire.  Wow.  Bad enough that I had to come off a 12 hour mid-watch and had to get up early to go take a driver’s test for a license that I don’t want and will never use.  No, that’s not bad enough.  I have to spectacularly fail the thing with a Kiwi evaluator who seems to genuinely enjoy his work.  According to the other Kiwi, this guy has never, in two years passed anybody.  No one.  He fails everybody, then goes and drinks beer.  My crimes against the free world:

1.       Driving a critically unsafe 12 feet with only one hand on the steering wheel.  10 and 2 is king in the Sinai, baby!  Forget all the modern research that shows 10 and 2 are about the worst possible hand positioning on a steering wheel that has an airbag.  TIS!  Fail!

2.      Exceeding the posted speed limit.  On a downhill slope, I allowed the vehicle speed to reach a blistering 27 KPH (for you “yanks” that’s  16.7 MPH.)  I am amazed that the Hungarians (the local equivalent of MP’s) did not jump out of the bushes and subdue me with pepper spray and billy sticks! Fail!

3.       On an unlined road, I failed to cross the centerline prior to making a left turn.  Fail!

4.      I did not perfectly center the truck when I backed it into the parking space.  I’ll cop to this one.  I did it!  Put me in bad driver’s prison.  There was 3 feet of space on the driver’s side, and only 5 feet of space on the passenger’s side.  It was a huge parking space, but there is no excuse when it comes to safety mister!  Fail!

5.      Based on how worked up the guy was, I think I may have accidently shot the pope.

This shit it typical military.  Don’t get me wrong driving is a full contact sport here.  These Bedouins are some crazy motherfuckers.  They will take a Datsun 720 (none of you are old enough to remember those) and weld on a ten foot wide bed.  Then load them with so much crap that it takes them 30 minutes to climb a hundred foot hill with a 2% grade.  Of course, once they make it up the hill, they keep it floored, so they can make up time coming down the hill.  If one of these things hits a fully armored F-350, the Ford loses!  Fuck being rated to take 3 RPG rockets, they can’t begin to handle a suicidal nomadic tribesman with a load of scrap steel and camel bowel soup.  An up-armored hummer will pop like a watermelon tossed off a building.

Auto accident is the signature wound of the MFO.  That’s all that really happens to anybody here.  Unfortunately, it happens quite often.  There is a macho game here among the Bedouins.  It seems to involve swerving through all the existing lanes of the road while cresting a hill.  Some sort of proof of courage.  It is entirely possible to be cresting a hill and have a guy swerve into your lane going 60 miles an hour.  Intentionally.  Fuck.  This Is Sinai.

Now, you have to understand the military mindset.  Whenever there is an accident, the military proceeds with the unshaken, inviolate belief that it was avoidable.  All stop, end of story.  So the poor sinner involved gets asked the critical question “what could you have done to avoid this?”  If the individual being questioned does not provide an immediate and satisfactory answer, one will be provided for him.  The provided answer usually involves the removal of rank and pay, so his first answer better be accepted.  “SGT Jones!  I can’t believe this could happen!  How did you allow yourself to be struck by a falling meteor?  What could you have done to prevent this?  PVT Williams got all crushed and burned to death!  You failed your Soldier!  How could you have prevented this?”  Seriously, this is exactly what an investigation into a meteor strike on an army vehicle would sound like.  Ask any of the MPs that follow my FB page.  They are all laughing and nodding right now.  Now if the stupid stopped there, if would be ok.  But it wouldn’t.  See, there are people in the Army whose whole justification, whose whole reason for existence is to analyze accidents and come up with prevention measures.  Under the Holy Mantra “one life is one too many” any common sense is flushed down the toilet and any manner of stupid can be used to provide justification for one’s phony-ass job.

See, what would happen in the above scenario is that SGT Jones, who let’s remember is damn glad to be alive, after surviving being in a truck hit by a fucking meteor, now has to justify not saving the life of his Battle Buddy.  Let’s remember that “act of God” is not a check box on any army form.  He will stutter something about admantium meteor shields attached to the body armor to be worn in trucks at all times.  Now, this answer will be accepted.  Really.  Jones’ CO knows there’s no fucking way that he could have avoided a fucking meteor!   But he has to “play the game,” because he has to report to his boss on how the accident can be avoided in the future.  And his boss will take the answer because he has nothing better, and he has to report it to higher.

Skip ahead 2-3 years.  Some Light Bird in the pentagon is struggling through the middle of his rotation as an army safety management officer.  His evaluation, and his chance for promotion, is based on his ability to make recommendations to improve safety.  But he really has nothing to do.  Anything that could reasonably be done was fixed 2-3 years ago at the company or battalion level.  But he has to produce something, or he won’t get a good rating.  So he will produce a recommendation that in areas where meteor strikes occur that local commands investigate the use of admantium meteor shields in all military vehicles.  He turns in the report.  Since the report deals with safety, it will be immediately disseminated to the lowest level.

It should, oh lord should be dropped there.  Yes, here is another chance for common sense to kick in, and the bulletin be crumpled up and tossed in the trash.  But no.  There are regulations that state that all safety bulletins will be posted, and inspections are conducted to ensure that they are.  There are individuals within every unit who are tasked with implementing all safety procedures.  They exist at the company level, battalion level, brigade level, division, and army levels.  Any of these monkeys can get hit by the Good Idea Fairy, and it’s game on.

Good Idea Fairy defined

 

There are good safety people in the army.  From the first line supervisor who says “enough is enough” and breaks apart the rickety ass ladder that people have been using because they have nothing better to use, thereby forcing the unit to buy a safe ladder, to the Commander that genuinely makes safety an issue at his unit.  These guys save people a whole lot of pain and suffering.  Then there’s Chock-block Charlie.  These shitbags are everywhere.  There’s one in most battalions or higher.  These guys live to enforce regulations.  No matter how stupid the regulation, it is their power base and they will protect it.  They hold inspections to ensure the ropes connecting chock blocks are uniform in length and serviceable as required in (fill in the blank regulation.)  They pour over every new safety bulletin looking for new policies they can implement and enforce.  Unfortunately, they usually have gathered a lot of power over the years, and armed with the “one life is too many” ace in the hole, they can do anything.  Now Chock-block Charlie sees the new safety bulletin and remembers that there was a meteor strike in the area “a few years back.”  He uses the safety budget to have “meteor shields” made.  The maintenance guys can’t get enough budget to order parts to keep the trucks running, but good ole’ Chock-block comes up with the tax payer’s moulah to have 40 pounds of steel hammered into a shield that can be worn over an IBA.  Just like that, everybody is that much more miserable.  I mean safer.  Everyone is safer!

There is a picture in the MFO drivers training slides.  It shows where some Bedouin has lashed down several full length telephone poles sideways to the hood of his pickup and he is driving down the street.  The poles are taking out fences on one side of the street, and mirrors of trucks parked on the other side of the street.  Homeboy is just trucking right down the road.  Obviously ensuring that I fully cross the centerline prior to making a left turn will allow me to avoid all accidents.

This is Sinai!  Hand me my meteor shield, I’m off to war!