Accidents

For a species that is so enamored with machines as the humans are, they have very little respect for them. I should be fair and note the fact that licenses are required in order to operate most machinery, specifically the automobiles that we are all stuck with as our main methods of transportation around town. However, some people that have received them should not have received licenses to begin with. Perhaps the qualifications for the licenses to not require a rudimentary understanding of physics. That is the only explanation I can think of when a driver of an automobile is surprised when inertia continues to carry the 4,000 pound vehicle forward when road surfaces are slick with rain and the tires cannot find instant traction.

That is my rather technical way of saying what most humans would say as, “The driver in the car behind me skidded into the back of my car at a stop and was too stupid to know why.” I could use more colorful language, but I am slowly becoming used to the local parlances.

I do not drive a great deal as my work is mostly at home, but I do find it a bother. It has been raining quite a bit lately, so the roads are “hazardous” or so they say on the news. Accidents do happen of course, but the sheer disregard of the machine which is being operated and a complete lack of knowledge of the physics behind it does upset me some. It was just me in the car and only the rear bumper needs to be repaired, but my sister could have been in it with me, and the result could have been much worse.

Now comes the task of getting repairs made. This is all handled through a bureaucratic process known as insurance. In my research, I was fortunate to recognize that operating a motor vehicle not only requires a license but insurance on that vehicle. At the time, I considered it to be an unnecessary cost, created by the human need to generate money from unnecessary things, but I am finding it quite useful now. I could have made the repairs myself, which would have been much faster than this process, but the bureaucracies humans put in place fascinate me. I will study this more.