The Invisible Man Top launch road safety campaign

HAVE you ever wanted to kill someone? Well, following probably the worst fright of my life, I got so angry I felt like shaking someone to death. The ironic side to this is I had just almost killed this person . . . by accident.

Last December, on a dark Winter’s night, while driving home from work meeting a steady stream of lights coming against me, in a split second a person walking appeared in front of me, almost blacked out in dark clothes except for a face. I still shudder when I think about the incident and how near I came to a fatal tragedy. How I managed to swerve and miss I don’t know. I was so shaken I stopped and thus my reaction that followed. When I calmed a little I was going to drive on again when I suddenly thought I have to address this in some way. I thought about what I had in the back of my deliver van. I put on the warning lights, got out the van and walked back, opened the back door, rummages, found what I wanted and walked back to my “invisible man”. As I approached him, I could see the surprised look on his face by the glow of the intermittently flashing lights. As I thrust my high visibility bib into his chest. “Do you realise I almost killed you?” I said. He stared at me with a surprised look as if I came from another planet. I said, “wear this and spare your family and some other unfortunate driver a lot of grief ”.

Now this is a question I have for pedestrians at night or even low light on dark Winter evenings, some walking on country roads, with no footpaths or hard shoulders; Do you realise how invisible you are to drivers if not wearing the appropriate high viability clothing?

However as drivers we are all aware of how invisible you can be. My near miss experience is not in any way unique to me. Every driver will have experienced at some stage passing these almost invisible pedestrians and wondering what are they thinking?

I am a delivery van driver, just one of 32 delivery drivers who work for Top Part Motor Factors, and collectively cover over 3 million km every year. Having shared my experience with work colleagues, we have agreed that all delivery van drivers in future will carry a modest supply of high visibility bibs. In the event of passing a pedestrian that is not clearly visible in low light or at night, we may stop, present them with a bib and warn them of the danger they are in. We hope this initiative will have some impact, however small, and hopefully save a life and heartache to their family members. Not to mention the remorse and anguish of the unfortunate driver involved.

Will this make a difference you may ask? Well for us who drive for a living, what is the alternative as we go about our late evening rounds in darkness ... just continue to drive by, if we are lucky, and curse in solitary silence what can only be described as unexplainable human stupidity!