I'm reminded of two things.

The first is an account I've read of Thoreau walking in the woods with a friend, the friend comments that he always wished he could find an Indian arrow head as he'd heard that they were plentiful in that area, Thoreau responded by leaning over and picking one up an handing it to his friend with with some sort of pithy comment about observing vs seeing.

The 2nd was a personal experience that occurred when I was down in Panama working, post invasion. I was with 2 writers and a local "guide", we came upon an apartment building that had been shelled pretty severely, occupants had fled and it was slowly being torn apart for it's contents of copper wire, pipe and whatever else had been left behind. The writers wanted to go up a couple of floors and talk to some of the scavengers, I had what I can only call a "hinky" feeling and picked up a piece of steel pipe, I told them that I wasn't knowingly going to go into a building where guys were tearing apart walls to scavenge. Upon reflection, they decided that it probably wasn't a very good idea. They had simply gotten caught up in the moment and had forgotten that while most of the people we'd met had been very gracious to us, there were more than a few who were a bit pissed off at Americans for having destroyed their homes.

And about that driving thing, yes, yes, yes. Most people are simply unaware of their surroundings when driving. It's easy to get distracted by the ipod, the cell phone, the dvd player, the espresso machine, etc. I'm constantly scanning and making alternate escape plans, the best part is when someone does something really stupid and we know it is coming for quite a while before it occurs.