Oregon drivers seem to have trouble driving straight or staying in their lanes. You can see this every day as vehicles ahead of you veer across the lines to their right and to their left. Luckily, these deviations usually have no dire consequences. But sometimes they do.

On the first day of the Memorial Day weekend, a couple of teenagers drove off Little North Fork in Marion County, and one was killed. Near Madras in Central Oregon, six people were injured when a camper "crossed the centerline and collided head-on with a passenger car," the OSP reported. In Grant County, a 22-year-old man from Redmond was on a straight and level stretch of Highway 402 when he drove off the road, flipped his truck and died.

Reports of vehicles crossing into the oncoming lanes and causing head-on crashes seem to be getting more frequent. We all must remind ourselves every time we get behind the wheel that just like piloting a plane, driving is a serious, potentially deadly business and requires us to be constantly and fully alert. (hh)