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PatchWork |
Last Updated 06/20/05
Email: joy@our-town.com
For Your Sake And Theirs, Buckle Up
by Joyce Whitis
The headlines make us wince, “High School Senior Killed”. Sadly it has happened yet once again. A young man lies beneath his overturned car, blood from his broken body turning green grass red . He’s already dead when a stranger stops to help him. HE WAS NOT WEARING A SEAT-BELT!!!
“Two College Students Die In Crash”. This time the driver and one passenger are thrown from the pickup racing too fast for a sharp curve. One dies on the pavement, the driver is care-flighted though barely alive. His injuries result in partial amputation of limbs. NEITHER WAS WEARING A SEAT-BELT!!! But the third passenger was. He remained inside the pickup when it turned over twice and slid along the shoulder. This young man walked away with minor bruises.
A car with three young girls and one young man attempts to make their car a roller-coaster on the old “dairy barn road” outside Dublin. The young man, a front seat passenger, is belted in, the driver and the two girls in the back seat are not. “Give it the gas!” someone shouts. The driver responds by floor-boarding it as the car tops the first of several hills in the paved road. Briefly they become airborne just before crashing. The young driver and the two girls in the backseat all are thrown out of the car. All have compound fractures and other deep, severe wounds that later require long hospitalization, numerous surgeries and scars that will last a lifetime. The young man, unhurt, runs down the road to get help for his friends. Remember HE WAS THE ONLY ONE WEARING A SEATBELT.
Sometimes alcohol or drugs are involved in an accident. Sometimes the highway is rain-slick. Sometimes ice on the road is a factor. Sometimes the vehicle is traveling at an unsafe speed. Whatever other factors relating to these true accounts of wrecks here in Erath County, whatever else is the cause of an automobile crash, the facts are that if the driver and passengers had been belted in, they would have stayed in the vehicle and walked away with only very minor injuries. The fact that seat belts can save lives has been proven over and over and still there are those who are careless with their lives. I’ve heard most of the excuses,
“I’m not a sissy!”
“I don’t have to wear a seat-belt in this truck.”
“I think I ought to be free to choose if I want to wear one or not.”
“If I got trapped in the car under water, or if the car caught on fire, I might not be able to get out.”
“I have to get in and get out so often, it’s just too much trouble to buckle up.”
Then there is the all time favorite, “I’m not going very far.”
Tommy was an excellent driver. He had never had a driving accident. On the afternoon of March 13, 2001, he drove from his dairy farm five miles from Stephenville to the post office on Graham Street, just a short trip. He was in an especially good mood. Dairying was what he loved to do and the road ahead looked really good. With money from some property he’d sold, he was driving a new pickup and he had a load of registered Holstein heifers coming from Canada that were paid for. Early that morning he’d called his mother as he did most every morning. His parents were on their way to Houston to visit her brother’s grave, so he talked to her on her cell phone, wishing them a safe trip. The rest of the day had been spent with his sons and four of his 12 grandchildren, fixing up things around the dairy.
Around 3:00 he got in his pickup for the short trip to town. At first the grandchildren jumped in to go with him but then decided to stay at the dairy and ride around in the Polaris he had bought just the day before. At the post office he saw Kenneth Pack, an old friend. They talked about the dairy business. On Graham Street he stopped at Polished Pets to visit with his wife, Beverley, then started down the Lingleville Highway toward home.
A light blue pickup was parked on the right shoulder up ahead. The driver, a student at TSU had started to her parents’ home in Abilene then decided to turn around and go back to Stephenville. As Tommy started to pass, she turned sharply to the left. Her left front fender struck the other pickup on the right side behind the passenger’s second door. The sudden hard impact caused Tommy’s pickup to spin out of control, sliding down the highway and overturning at least twice. He was thrown from the truck.
He was a good driver. He was only 3 miles from home. The weather was clear. No alcohol or drugs were involved. The accident was not his fault. Would he be alive if he had been wearing a seat-belt? That is the heart-breaking thought that haunts us all daily.
For your own sake and for the sake of all those who love you, don’t move your vehicle out of the driveway until everyone is buckled up.