Peters had seen news reports of the crash, and was struck by the seemingly festive nature of the gathering, until it turned fatal, that is.
"Everyone's out there, it seems like it's good old-fashioned fun, it's a very party-like atmosphere," she said. "There's the familiarity of it - people had done this before, and it had never been a problem before."
Peters said it's that familiarity that makes even the obviously risky - walking onto a thoroughfare, after two fast and furious cars have screamed past you - seem like perfectly normal behavior.
In her field, it's quite commonly known that people's perceptions of risk are often out of sync with the reality of the risk. People worry about exotic and yet rare ailments like mad cow disease or anthrax poisoning - Peters has a relative whose particular fear is of avian flu - while giving barely a second thought to the common flu, which kills about 36,000 people in the U.S. every year.
And so it is with cars. We climb in and out of them every day, several times usually, mostly thinking about nothing more serious than what you need to pick up at the grocery store or whether you'll find a good parking space.
And yet, some 43,000 people a year are killed in traffic accidents in the U.S. And the number of murders during that time? About 17,000. But you know which looms more fearsome to most people.
Even after this weekend, you have to agree with the man quoted in The Sun's story yesterday, who expected perhaps a lull in the drag racing tradition in southern Maryland, but just a temporary one. "They're going to be back out here," he predicted.
Peters would agree. She points to what she calls the two competing sides of human behavior - the one guided by the more instinctive, "lizard" part of our brain, versus the one ruled by the more deliberative, rational part that has evolved over the years.
It would be nice, she said, if the latter would prevail, and protect us from the former. But, as this weekend proved, it doesn't.
jean.marbella@baltsun.com
