4 O'clock Knock
Koontz, and All (This is REALLY LONG)
There are plenty of Police out there doing a lot outside their daily duties to attempt to reduce road trauma. There is a program called the "4 O'clock Knock" which is run at schools and youth groups in the southern parts of NEW SOUTH WALES, I'm not sure about interstate.
The Police involved don't mention getting tickets once. They talk about the affects on friends, families people you don't know, like cops and ambo's and firies and other driverS.
They also talk in terms of not just killing yourself but what happens to the guys/gals that survive and are fine and live with the guilt of survival and the ones that live but don't fair so well.
One of the most powerful things I saw at one of these nights was the reaction that a paralympian received when he told a room a young guys, the worst thing was that he was could never walk again, and even worse could never get a 'stiffy' (his words). Mate dying isn't gunna happen to any of you if you get asked, I'd say the same, cos its the last thing we want, we won't accept it.
And besides you can't bring a dead person to one of these nights to talk to everyone can you. But you can put this guy in front of them and they can't ingnore it. So anyway this is just one sort of thing that needs to be put in place more widely and funded by the government also, cos it works.
This program was actually writyten about by Street Machine some time back.
At the moment, Police, Ambo's, Firies, Doctors, Paralympians, Parents and others all volunteer to do this, they don't get paid by the RTA or their work or anyone else, they just do it cos they don't want to see young people or anyopne for that matter dying on our roads.
Probably the most powerful and disturbing thing that I have to do in my job and that most of you would have no idea about is that when I go to a Parents house at 4' O Clock (hence the name of the program, cos its normally the early hours of the morning) your Mum will be the first one out of bed and standing at the window when she hears the car pull up, cos she's not really asleep. She thinks its you comming home, and then she makes out the police car, and see's two uniforms walking to the door, alone. She knows what we are going to say to her before we open our mouths. And then who knows what to expect from there, but usually its sobbing and crying, and then Dad wakes up and the usually timmid good natured bloke starts yelling at me and treatening me with physical harm cos he thinks I'm a liar and wants me out of his house cos he doesn't want to know that his son/daughter is dead.
Then they want to see you, and it can't always happen, cos trust me I've seen you and I'm gunna have nightmares anyway, why do Mum and Dad have to go through it too. But then again someone has to come down and ID you cos officially unless I know you, like maybe I see you every day at Macca's, I can't do it. Then Mum and Dad have to decide, does one of them come down or do they both come together. They both come, they always do. Then they have to see you layed out on a bed with whatever horrific injuries you have sustained. Then they say your name and start crying again and I was hoping up until this point that we were wrong and that the ID we found in his pocket was his mate's that he borrowed to get into the night club and he's safe and sound somewhere.
Then we have to talk to Mum and Dad about a whole heap of crap that they don't want to talk about, but it has to be done. Then I tell them to go home and get their favourite photo of you and look at it, and burn it into their memory cos that's how they need to remember you. They don't need to remember you stretched out on a bed at the Hospital or Morgue...
Then I give them some of your stuff like the JAG wallet they gave you when you got your licence, so you could throw away that Quicksilver velcro thing.
We ask them if there's anything we can do for them, and sometimes we get an angry look from Dad and get told, "You could have pulled him over and stopped him before this all happened..." And I wish I did.
So Guys, believe me COPS are out there doing more than just giving out tickets, and some times off their own bat. But its legal action/tickets are the only ammo the Government and the People that elect them provide. Mind you even if we had given you ticket just before the above sort of thing happened, we would still be getting blamed for not doing enough.
At the end of the day it is YOU behind the wheel, take some responsibility, and have a little maturity admitt you've done the wrong thing if you break the road rules. Cos when you take the attitude that the COPS are just out to get us you don't get the message. I personally have a chat to more young blokes and gals on the road than I issue tickets cos I know from experience that if I say mate I don't want you to lose your licence for something this stupid so just do me a favour and take it easy', I'm gunna get a better response. But if I see the same **** again you're getting a ticket (But that's just me).
The road isn't a race track or a place to have fun. Its simply there to get you from A-B and thats all.
And just for those of you who think that the above is a nice piece of creative writing, its not. Its probably spot on with what really happens when I have to do a 4 O'clock Knock every couple of weeks. And its very very close to what happened when the COPS turned up at my house to tell me and my Mum that my Sister was dead because some 19 year old ******** drove her into the rear end of a parked semi. Why because, he was too busy having a discussion with they guys in the back and forgot that his grilfriend's head was aimed straight at the right tail light of a 20 tonne monster.
If any of you are in the Southern Riverina Area of NSW and can contribute to something like the program above them PM me and I'll get something happening down here.
All most of us are asking is that you think about **** and I mean really think about it. You're not out there playing soccer, you're out there throwing around 1300 kilos of steel at each other... If you F&#@ UP the penalty is a little worse than a corner kick.
Sorry about the length, just somehting that needs to be said.
