A six mile metaphor for life

I love road trips, although driving 20 hours straight is a little more difficult now than when I was younger. We recently drove from Kansas City, MO to Provo, UT. It's a long drive. But I love seeing our country, even the boring parts like Kansas and Eastern Colorado. As we were driving along I-70, we had just come out of the Eisenhower Tunnel when I started seeing signs like this one:

I saw that and didn't think much of it. I figured truck drivers would see this and take the necessary precautions as they traveled this route the next 6 miles or so. It seemed like a pretty basic warning sign, letting drivers know about the upcoming potential dangers.
  
Then a couple miles down the road I saw this sign:

 

This one caught my attention a little more than the first sign did. I'm assuming that they needed to put this sign up because someone (or more than one someone) didn't pay attention to the first sign and ended up in some serious trouble. A runaway truck on a 7% grade at an elevation of around 9,000 feet with certain death on the left side of the road is not good. Which is why they also have these:

For those who may not be familiar with these, a runaway truck ramp is basically an off-ramp made with a deep layer of sand and/or gravel. This allows the truck to exit the interstate and come to a safe stop. It can then be towed out and repaired (which is both a difficult and expensive process). On this particular stretch of the highway I think they had two or three of these runaway truck ramps.

A few more miles down the road I saw this sign:

Again, there must have been incidents in the past where truck drivers just stopped paying attention after going 5 of the 6 miles and then got into some serious trouble. Or in other words, a failure to endure to the end could result in some pretty serious consequences.
  
So, in a 6 mile stretch of I-70, I was reminded of the following principles of our mortal life:

• We are given directions (commandments) as we begin our mortal journey
• We are given frequent reminders (from parents, teachers, local church leaders, general authorities, and our prophet)
• When we mess up (sin) there is a way out-runaway truck ramps (repentance), but the process of getting back on the road is often difficult and painful.
• We need to endure to the end-it doesn't matter if we make it 83.33% of the way, if we disregard the commandments near the end it can have serious consequences-to the point of being spiritually fatal.

I'm sure there's other lessons to be learned here, but that's enough for now. I'm on vacation after all.