Situational Awareness

objects in mirror…..

Situational awareness is a term in aviation to describe, well, your awareness of a situation. Its your ability to keep rightside up and upside down, ascent and descent, and right from left in proper perspective. It's part of what keeps pilots from flying airplanes upside down and into the ground when they should be rightside up and climbing at night or in a storm.

I'm not a pilot but it seems I'm having a bit of a problem with situation awareness as I continue making the transition from a great big truck to a mid-size sedan. I was reminded of the fact Wednesday as I drove by the local auto-body shop and saw my medical assistant's big SUV parked there waiting to have the front bumper fixed. That would be the very same front bumper I backed into last week in the parking lot at the office. It wasn't easy: There were only a half-dozen spots available when I decided I liked the one next to her big black truck.

With my new car I've discovered I'm doing a terrible job turning corners-- cutting them too close. And I'm doing a terrible job backing up into spaces in parking lots and here at home in the garage. At first I thought it was a serious decline in mental function. Then I started to think perhaps I'm just being careless, a daredevil. Well, I'm happy to report, the problem has nothing to do with deteriorating mental function or recklessness. It seems it has more to do with the difference between sitting up high and being able to see all four margins of a vehicle versus sitting down low and not seeing any margins of the vehicle. And, too, in the truck it was so dang big I learned things were not as close as they appeared. So, close in the truck was, really, not all that close. Close in my Buick, I'm learning, is, well, a trip to the body shop. My car goes in next.