It's an unusual word - "overcorrected." It isn't used much in conversation or in written communications, but in a certain kind of news story the word appears with distressing frequency.
Those reports concern highway accidents. All too often they involve young drivers on two-lane roads. In a typical N&O account, this one from three years ago, a teenage driver's vehicle "went off the right side of the road." She "overcorrected," swerved across the road and hit another vehicle traveling the other way. "Speed was not a factor." The 16-year-old driver was killed.
Such stories are unbearably sad. How common are they? A check of The N&O's electronic archive turned up 33 stories in the past five years (since January 2007) that appear to involve fatal accidents (sometimes with more than one death) on two-lane roads in the paper's circulation area in which "overcorrected" (or "over-corrected") appeared. In almost all these crashes the driver reportedly ran off the right shoulder and then regained the pavement, only to crash.
A striking aspect of these wrecks is the comparative youth of the drivers (there were 16 females and 17 males). Although ages weren't given in every story, at least 14 of the drivers were teenagers and seven more were in their 20s. This suggests that inexperience behind the wheel is an important contributing factor.
So, as Debbe Geiger's Point of View article on the opposite page makes clear, is the state of our state's rural roads. Mile after mile of North Carolina two-lanes have no shoulder to speak of - just a painted white line bordering dirt or grass. In many places the dirt has worn away and there's a dangerous drop-off from the pavement. When a vehicle's right wheels slip off the road, and the driver yanks the steering wheel hard to the left - "overcorrects" - the vehicle may return to the lane and then swerve on across it.
How can we reduce the number of such crashes? Two answers suggest themselves. First, as Geiger advocates, the state must do a better job in building and repairing rural roads. Not all states have so many roads without paved shoulders. It's time to reduce their prevalence here.
Second, driver education should stress the proper way to handle these situations. We can't say it any better than G. Max Bloodworth, retired from the state Highway Patrol, did in a People's Forum letter published yesterday:
"Most importantly, if you run off the road, DON'T try to pull back onto the pavement or hit your brakes - remove your foot from the gas pedal and allow the car to coast to a near-stop. You might knock over a few mailboxes, but you won't lose control and strike a power pole, tree, or other car head-on."
Every new driver should be taught that lesson.
