Dangers of distracted driving highlighted: “It Can Wait”
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
ELK MOUND — What is a person’s life worth?
Is someone else’s life — or your own — worth that text message you got on your smartphone while you were driving?
Is a life worth checking your e-mail or looking up an event on the Internet while you are driving?
As part of an effort to help students conclude nothing on a smartphone is worth someone’s life, Jim Jermain of AT&T Wisconsin brought the “It Can Wait” campaign to Elk Mound High School April 16.
AT&T has been promoting the “It Can Wait” campaign for the past eight years to highlight the dangers of distracted driving.
Wisconsin State Patrol Trooper Timothy Knutson also participated in the assembly at Elk Mound High School.
And the assembly included AAA’s distracted driving simulator and four Elk Mound High School student volunteers.
Victims
Jermain showed a video profiling two accidents in which people were killed by drivers who were distracted by their cellular phones.
“One was a driver just slightly older than you. He was driving down the road and crossed over the center line. It probably just took a couple of seconds,” Jermain said.
“He was looking down at his text message and didn’t realize there was an oncoming SUV pulling a horse trailer full of horses. He ran into them [head-on], and it killed him instantly. I always think about how quickly that must have happened. When you look down, you don’t realize how easy it is to drift over the center of the road,” he said.
“The other situation was when a really innocent individual, a sixteen year old, was on a bicycle riding to a friend’s house,” Jermain said.
“There was a guy texting a passenger in his pickup truck. He didn’t realize the car in front of him had stopped to make a left turn, and when he realized it, he slammed on the brakes. He was pulling a trailer, and the trailer swung around, hit the individual on the bike and sent him into a rock wall and killed him instantly,” he said.
“It seems so silly. Why would someone be texting the person next to him? But that’s what we see on the roadways,” Jermain said.
Another video that has made an impression on Jermain involved a person who killed two people.
“One video that has always stood out in my mind is a gentleman named Reggie who came to Wisconsin about three or four years ago. And in his situation, he was driving down a rural road, in Nevada or maybe California, and it was early in the morning. He was going to work. He probably wasn’t thinking much about the fact that he was distracted looking at his phone, and he drifted over the centerline,” Jermain said.
“In that particular case, he actually sideswiped a car and turned it sideways. And there was a pickup truck following right behind him, and the pickup truck driver could not stop and T-boned the car with two professors in it — and killed both professors,” he said.
“Reggie talked about how selfish he was, that his text message was more important than those two individuals’ lives. I always think about that. I travel quite a bit for my job in Wisconsin. I always think about, ‘how much time would it take me just to pull over and respond to an e-mail or respond to a text message?’ I always think about what Reggie said, and is my text message, that little bit of time I am saving if I am doing it on the roadway, is that worth somebody’s life? That’s the message we want to share with you,” Jermain said.
Caleb
The first victim highlighted in the video is Caleb, age 18, who looked down to check his cell phone, drifted over the centerline — and slammed head-on into a vehicle pulling a horse trailer carrying six horses.
“It’s just takes one little thing when you’re going 55 miles per hour to mess everything up — forever,” said Caleb’s sister.
The text message on his cell phone wasn’t even an important text message, it was something like, “what road are you on?” she said.
“It was just one little thing that he thought wouldn’t matter. But it did,” Caleb’s sister said.
“It’s so easy to not die from this. Just don’t do it. I don’t want anybody else to have the same story we do, to carry the sadness and depression that we carry,” she said.
Caleb’s mother struggles every day, too.
“It was so hard to hold the family together. As soon as I would get out of bed, I would make the bed right away so I wouldn’t get back in it. You can’t get back in the bed and cover your head up and give up. You have to keep going for the other kids, and Caleb would want me to. I had a lot of time alone when I would cry a lot. I never thought I could cry so many tears in all my life,” she said.
“There’s not going to be an end to this grieving for me. Not for your child. You just don’t stop grieving — ever — I think. Every single day. There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not thinking of him … or I’m reminded of him,” Caleb’s mother said.
“This is my life now. I just have to keep going, for him, and trying to help other families from having to go through this … if I cry a little bit, it’s okay, because it’s for Caleb. I love him still, with all my heart. I would like to give him one more hug,” she said.
Forrest
The second victim in the video was 16 year-old Forrest.
“He had not lived a fourth of his life, and in a split second, he was gone. And why? Because someone was not paying attention. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time,” said Forrest’s aunt.
“They were just riding their bikes over to a friend’s house. And this man was actually texting the woman sitting right next to him in the truck — which is ridiculous. He was going to hit a car in front of him, and then he slammed on his brakes, the trailer went around and hit my son (and threw) him into a rock wall,” said Forrest’s mother.
“Why was he riding his bike at that time? Why was the man texting? Why was my nephew there?” Forrest’s aunt said, adding that his empty room and the empty place at the table are daily reminders.
“My mother pretty much died of a broken heart. She is with him now. Had I not had Alexander, I would have been with them. But I have Alexander. So I have to stick around. I worry about him,” Forrest’s mother said.
Alex, Forrest’s brother, had not wanted to talk about the death of his brother prior to the filming of the video.
Alex said he and his brother were cleaning up pine needles and “dog poop” in the yard.
“My last words to him were, ‘I wish you were dead.’ Those were my last words. It should have been me. It was my fault. He was such a better person than me,” said Forrest’s brother, who cried while he talked about Forrest.
The interviewer quickly interjected, telling Alex the crash that claimed Forrest’s life was in no way Alex’s fault.
The person who killed Forrest was sentenced to 28 months in prison.
“There was no intent to kill my son. It was an accident … but 28 months for a life? Really? … He was special to me. He was my gentle giant,” Forrest’s mother said.
“I have become so aware of drivers using their phones, and it angers me. There are times, where if I’m not driving, if I’m the passenger, and I will stare them down. And I think, ‘what are you doing?’ I don’t get what is so important that it has to happen at that moment. I wish it could be disabled, that once you get into a car, it is disabled. In many ways, a car is a weapon, and if you’re not responsible, you can hurt someone with it. In this case, someone was making a left-hand turn, and if he had not been texting, he would have been paying attention to the road and stopped,” Forrest’s aunt said.
When asked what he would say if he could send a message to his brother, Alex replied, “Show me some guidance.”
He continued, “I miss him. But I don’t miss him. And that’s killing me. Forgetting his death anniversary and his birthday, and I don’t know if that’s just part of moving on, but, I’d tell him that I love him, and I’m sorry for the way I treated him.”
State patrol
The summer after Trooper Knutson’s first year after college, his cousin was hit and killed by a drunk driver who ran a stop sign.
“For me, that was my big push into law enforcement, and that’s why I’m here now,” he said.
“Last summer I responded to a two-vehicle crash on Highway 85 just south of Rock Falls. The report we got was a vehicle had crossed the centerline and hit a vehicle head-on. They had auto-launched the helicopter, and that’s never a good thing, that’s never good a sign. When I got there to the scene, one of the vehicles was in the ditch on its roof, and there were children crawling out the windows. Come to find out, as part of my investigation, the driver who was southbound was looking at his phone `and crossed the centerline. When he looked up and realized what was happening, he swerved back and it was too late. He sideswiped that SUV that had five kids in it and two adults … it rolled three times before it came to rest on the roof. Thankfully, due to seat belts, every person in that vehicle lived,” Trooper Knutson said.
“These videos are not a joke,” he said, noting that during the videos he had observed some students snickering and talking with their friends.
“A lot of you, I’m sure right now, are thinking, ‘this is never going to happen to me.’ Let me tell you, from experience, every single crash I’ve ever responded to, the people that were involved never expected it would happen to them. Nobody gets into their car and says, ‘I’m going to crash my car today,’” Trooper Knutson said.
Everyone involved in an accident says, first of all, they wish they could go back and change it, and they wish they had not done that, he said.
“But you can’t do that. You can’t go back and change it. But what you can do is prevent it from happening in the first place … Distracted driving is a growing issue that I see out on the road every day,” Trooper Knutson said.
119,000
“Over the past five years, there have been over 119,000 crashes due to distracted driving. In that same time period, there has been over 450 deaths due to distracted driving,” Trooper Knutson said.
“I was told there are about 350 students in attendance today. So I want everybody to look at the person sitting next to you, and look at the person sitting on the other side of you, and in five years, [imagine] ALL of you, plus 100 more, will be dead due to distracted driving,” he said.
The trooper asked the students when it is permissible for someone with a probationary license or learner’s permit to use their cell phone while driving.
One person in the audience said, “never.”
Another person in the audience said, “when you pull over to the side of the road.”
“It is illegal for anyone with a probationary status to use a cell phone at all while they are driving,” Trooper Knutson said, adding that includes hands-free as well.
“It is illegal for anybody with a driver’s license to text and drive,” he said.
The average ticket for texting and driving is $188 and four points on your license; only 12 points are allowed all together.
“If you are caught twice using a cell phone while you have a probationary license, your license is suspended,” Trooper Knutson said, adding that if you are texting in a construction zone with a probationary license, the fine is $500, and your license is suspended.
The number one thing people say when Trooper Knutson pulls them over is, “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Paying attention is part of driving, isn’t it? If we’re not paying attention while we’re driving, then we probably shouldn’t be driving,” he said.
“One of the women in the video mentioned that a vehicle should be considered a weapon. In the law enforcement world, a vehicle is often referred to as a two-ton bullet,” Trooper Knutson said.
Simulator
The four students who volunteered for the AAA distracted driving simulator all either had close calls or ended up crashing their “vehicle.”
The computer screen was projected onto a screen in the corner of the Elk Mound High School gymnasium so the audience could see what the volunteers were seeing on the driving simulator.
When the volunteers ran a red light or a stop sign or had a close call with other vehicles, there were gasps and expressions of disbelief from the audience.
The volunteers demonstrated how easy it is to be distracted by cell phones while driving, Jermain said when the driving simulations were finished.
At the end of the program, the students at the assembly were invited to visit www.itcanwait.com to “sign” a pledge: “I pledge to always drive distraction free. No exceptions. I pledge to never allow my phone to endanger myself or others behind the wheel. I pledge to be an advocate for the cause. To lead by example and spread the message. I pledge because I believe driving distraction-free can save lives and make the world a safer place.”