Head-Shaking in wonderment...

[Rod_outbak]

Every so often, I am dumbfounded with the blind stupidity of some folk.
[Maybe it's the elder grumpy in me coming out, but it's getting harder to ignore...]

10:30pm last night; someone pounding on the door.
We are 50 kms in either direction from 2 towns on a main (dirt)road, with homestead ~300 metres from the road.
So I assumed someone with car troubles.

Yep; young fella had rolled his 45 series cruiser ute.
A black cow wanders onto the road in the dark, lad avoided the cow, and lost control in the soft ground where the council have recently graded the dirt road with insufficient water/moisture. Cruiser is lying on it's roof, the cabin is mostly crushed, and I'm at a loss how he was able to walk the 10kms to knock on my door in the dark.
I'm even more amazed he wasnt still stuck in whats left of the cabin.

To be fair, the road there is VERY soft/bulldust, and the vehicle had skinny road tyres on it, and the 45 series were a model that had a fair wanderlust on even a good road.
From the tracks I doubt he was even going very fast.

Turns out the young fellas uncle is working on the property next door(15 kms), and so I drive him over there. He refuses medical help (I wanted to call an ambulance to check him over), and he assured me that once he'd sorted getting the car recovered, he'd attend hospital. He did ask for a cigarette repeatedly, but I dont smoke, and I'd strangle him before letting him smoke in my car anyway, so he had to suck it up...
As I'm driving the bloke to his uncle (15kms), he tells me he's having a bad week; he got caught by the local cops 3 nights back; riding a 4-wheeler on a public road back into town, after finishing work on a fenceline just outside town.
Cops did him for unregistered vehicle on a public road and no helmet. He got stung $390, which I thought was a bit lenient, but didnt want to bring him down even more...
Tonight he rolls his ute, and looks like it mightnt be repairable... He seemed a bit down in the mouth!! Wonder why??

[To be fair, the avoiding the cow and subsequent rollover seems to be the ONLY thing that wasnt his own poor judgement. The tracks show he wasnt speeding or doing anything stupid. I nearly did the same on my way home; the cows are nearly the same colour as the surrounding bare ground, and they are prone to wandering across the road at random. AND; the road is crap, with the recent grading..]

As we get near the property next door, he tells me he's keen to recover the ute without the cops being made aware; turns out his licence was suspended 2 weeks back for drink driving!

"So...." I ask; "You decide to drive across to pick the wife up while unlicensed, after losing your licence to a DUI, and being fined for the ATV event, and then roll your ute? How's THAT working out for you???"
He tells me "Not well..."

Ya THINK??

I did inform the lad that whilst I wouldnt go ringing the authorities myself, if they knock on my door to ask about my role in this, I wouldnt be hiding anything. He said he understood, and didnt expect me to lie on his behalf.
Nice of him!

Somewhere along the trip, young fella tells me this is the fourth car he's rolled, but the worst so far...
[Still time to improve on that score, Young Fella!!]
Honestly; I started out the night being concerned for the welfare of this bloke(barely older than a lad!).

By the time the whole sad story of his past few weeks comes out, I'm wondering if one of the gods is just persecuting one of the 'less-gifted' folk...

I left him in the hands of his uncle (who was most keen for me to not be involved any more than handing him over), stated my thoughts on him needing to attend a hospital for assessment, and made my way home. Back home by midnight, but spent about an hour thinking about the stupidity of this all in my mind...

Amazing...

[bigrich]

Some people are their own worst enemy, and their too stupid to see it. It’s someone else’s fault, or bad luck. Really it’s a lack of common sense and dumb ass risk taking.

[Sergeant Hartman]

I think it starts with parents. I know someone who did his car (just got it on P plate) while there another parent of his friend says so their son has crashed 2 or 3 cars and what can they do, it just happens.

Hope to God my kids don't crash but if they were drunk or doing something silly they gonna pay real hard

[Daddybang]

Sh@t I won't go telling ya's some of the truly dumbass things I did as a young fella...
Hopefully he'll learn and live to a ripe old age. (Thats not condoning or making excuses it sounds like he truly f@3ked up and needs to wakeup but how many of us can honestly say they haven't in their youth and at least it sounds like he didn't put anyone else in danger)

[Bruiser64]

Some people are just slow learners. I agree with Daddybang, youth and stupid do go hand in hand. I am constantly amazed that I managed to get through my early twenties given the very dangerous and stupid things I did on my motorbike. Hopefully this young bloke will connect the dots and realise that his poor decisions are to blame for his “run of bad luck”. It took me a while to understand the causal link between me riding like a goose and my frequent conversations with the highway patrol.

[JSS]

Yep unfortunately i have to agree with DB and Bruiser, i too was a dumbass as a young fella and did many stupid things that sometimes ended badly. Not condoning old mates DUI as that s**t is just dumb, but the crashing and the quad bike are really just "boys will be boys" kinda stuff, especially in the bush.

Rod although he really does sound like a dumbass, you're probably more annoyed at him because he kept you up late & interrupted your beer time

[pomemax]

At the time of you driving him over could you hear the banjo music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsC4kf6x_Q0

[Rod_outbak]

I would ALSO put my hand up for being a village idiot at that age (neighbour thinks he's around 20).

It's just pretty obvious that this lad has more lives than your average cat, and doesnt yet seem to be learning from the growing list of disasters in his life. From the conversation in the car last night (and another one when they called in this morning to retrieve a couple of items he left in my car), he really doesnt know why these things keep happening to him!
NOT the sharpest knife in the drawer...
The Phukup Fairy is giving him a LOT of warning shots, and he's ignoring the lot. No big deal when he kills himself, but it was pure blind luck that he wasnt on the return trip when that rollover occurred, and the 'missus' would have been crushed to death..

Another gripe which came to light this morning. The council really shouldnt be grading these roads without sufficient soil moisture, and I'd place well over half the reason for the accident, on the head of whomever thought it smart to grade a road without watering it.
Unfortunately, because the lad is unlicensed, taking the council to task over the practice is not going to happen, so we've missed a golden opportunity to make the damn road safer for everyone.
[But thats way too much for your average 20yo village idiot to appreciate.....]

Surprisingly, he's still alive this morning, but sports a fair amount of gravel rash, and an impressive shiner on one eye. Still doesnt look like anyone is considering taking him near a hospital(I did point out that he blacked out for some time after the car rolled, and he doesnt remember crawling out of the wreckage), so I hope at least one of those cat-lives is still working...
It seems the whole family has a long history of wrecked cars in their recent past, so he might just be living up to the family legacy...

Anyway; rant done.
Good luck to the lad, and I'm truly glad he survived a nasty accident, but I seriously dont want to be around when he uses up the last of those cat-lives...

[Die Judicii]

Yep,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
They do walk (drive) among us,,,,,,,,,,,,, that's the real scary thing.

[JSS]

As retarded as this kid is he's a thousand times better than the fvcking cvnt that lives somewhere around me. i woke up this morning to find that some absolute loser decided to smash the mirror off my car and whack a big dent in my bonnet. f***ing deadshit!! Cops came and took photos & printed the car & insurance company has been informed, what a pain in the ass though.......... i just don't understand what someone gets from the mindless destruction of other peoples property

[bigfellascott]

Reminds me of a young fella round here who's been in 2 or 3 roll overs in the last year, 3 died in one of em and he somehow survived to then be in another one mths later, some people are just flat out dense and will never learn and ain't worth wasting ya time on.

[Sergeant Hartman]

Something loose in their brain mate

[JSS]

There sure is mate.

[Daddybang]

I know what ya mean about the rds Rod. We had a crew out a couple of weeks ago to "fix" the rd in. No water truck just a grader and multityre roller. Then they can't understand why it turns to dust in a couple of days!!!!
We've told the council rep it needs ripping and re-sheeting (with water)but apparently we are just whingers!!!

[Sergeant Hartman]

Its drought so some smart arse has said ya mate it can be done without water sweet as bro. And council have decided yep save a few bucks

[Rod_outbak]

In this case, there is water available almost right along this road(supplied by artesian bores/pipelines), and there was a watering point nearby, previously used for this very purpose in the recent past.
Ironic that the council watering facility wouldnt be 500 metres from the rollover site....

Just lazy on behalf of council, but Ziad is right; someone decided they can simply do without...

Whenever the council work on our section of this main road (different council; we are on a council boundary), we have a standing arrangement where they can draw water from our artesian bore for no charge. The bore has sufficient flow/pressure to allow up to ~180,000 litres per day be drawn for their work, while not affecting our livestock watering pipeline network. This gives them easy access to water for ~15-20kms of the road, so that helps them out a lot.

I know the property where the rollover occurred, does much the same arrangement, but the conditions right now are so dry, the amount needed to even start watering the road was likely unviable. It's the wrong time of the season to burn money on this sort of work.

[TassieTiger]

When I was a kid, we were encouraged to get into a paddock and learn to control a car...I remember a cop coming down one night and we were in an open paddock next to a school, we thought we were in a huge amount of trouble....the bugger pulled out two traffic cones and showed us how to hand brake around the cones and slide out and away from them. The cop did so much for 6 teenage boys that night...15 years later, I actually taught car control to police and kids for a while at a local cop skid pan.
Kids today, with modern electronics do not need to drive - they learn to steer.

[Daddybang]

Yeah Rod I can see where waters a bit scarce it'd be a problem but here we've got a major river 500 meter away plus a about four feeder creeks between here and there and we've just been having a great wet season. I wouldn't be to pissed but we don't get any services out here for our rates( ie rubbish removal water mail etc you're probably in the same boat) . Still the rd was dirt when we brought the place so I shouldn't whinge