Posted: Wednesday, 13 January 2010 10:47AM
Save Lives, Don't Mourn Lives
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
One minute you’re cruising. The next minute you’re crushed in a mass of steel and glass, breathing your last breath on the open road.
Death can happen fast.
You’re behind the wheel and then you’re gone.
Of all the somber topics we discuss on “Corbett,” death by traffic accident seems to be the most wasteful, yet most preventable, cause of death. People sometimes die in great acts of bravery or sacrifice, but the loss of life due to a vehicle accident always seems so purposeless.
A variety of factors cause fatal traffic accidents. The accident often isn’t even the victim’s fault. But speed and reckless driving seem to contribute to most deaths on area roads. And that behavior has to change
Sound public policy can reduce serious accidents and deaths.
That’s a fact.
Some accidents will still occur but with a few basic steps, fewer crashes will take the lives of people behind the wheel.
So let’s start with the stretch of Route 115 in Bear Creek Twp. that seems particularly deadly. Three high profile accidents in recent days have resulted in two fatalities on the same stretch of road.
A county judge escaped serious injury Jan. 4 after he cracked up his car after drinking in a local bar. A 38-year-olds Bear Creek woman died last Thursday in a multi-car crash. And 45-year-old Kimberly Biggs Keil died yesterday afternoon when a driver traveling in the opposite direction lost control and crashed into her car.
Yesterday’s crash was the third accident in eight days.
After last week’s fatality, I spoke on the air with a Bear Creek supervisor who wants state and local officials to work together to form a safety corridor that will reduce the number of accidents.
His plan sounds so simple.
But I expect the typical bureaucratic bumbling, bungling and foot-dragging to take place as soon as anybody proposes serious change for the highway.
WILK News Radio traffic expert Rusty Fender and I talk regularly about accidents in the flood of reports that come into the station’s “jam line” where motorists and other observers call daily to report traffic tie-ups and accidents.
No matter what we say, no matter how cautious we ask drivers to be, somebody else always dies.
Cars roll, explode, burn, careen into other lanes of traffic and serve as the deadliest weapons in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Yet, drivers continue to drift on the road and in their minds. They text while driving, use their cell phones, daydream, eat and lose their temper because of road rage.
Mostly they speed. They drive recklessly. They drive too fast for conditions. They drive drunk.
Then they sometimes die or kill somebody else.
The community, of course, comes together to mourn their loss, to question their skills and to wait for other drivers to imitate them as they careen toward the grave.
Why not come together as a community to save lives rather than mourn lives? Why not fight to improve the roadways? Why not fight challenge elected and appointed officials empowered to act to do something rather than just say something?
This deadly stretch of road near the Bear Creek Charter School on Route 115 must change for the better.
We must demand that the speed limit be lowered from 50 to 35 miles per hour. Flashing yellow lights must be erected and used around the clock. More speed limit signs must be posted. Above all, state police must enforce the new speed limit and crack down on any and all traffic infractions. Without strict enforcement, nothing will change. Police should write 100 tickets a day if that’s what it takes to convince reckless drivers that we mean business.
Let the sad deaths of these two good women stand for something rather than just disappear into the statistics books. Let these tragic losses contribute to stopping the increasing road recklessness that kills. Let their passing help safeguard others who follow in their path.
Unless real change on Route 115 happens and happens fast somebody else will die.
They likely will not know what hit them. But we’ll know. And I don’t want to carry such guilt.
Do you?
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