Now that you have signed our petition, please share it. Email it. Facebook it. Twitter it. Print & Pass it. Do it.
Another way to share our story is to share this video. It tells the whole story of our loss & why we are asking for changes in truck safety. http://youtu.be/I-WQBEDpTVw
AnnaLeah & Mary were so full of life and had so much of it left to live when they were killed, at 17 & 13, in an accident involving 2 semi trucks on May 4, 2013. Their lives—like so many others—might have been spared if changes were made in truck safety regulations.
On May 5, 2014, we will be driving to Washington, D.C. and delivering signed petitions, each one put in an individual envelope—purple (remembering AnnaLeah) and orange (remembering Mary), to the Department of Transportation.
We will be letting Secretary Foxx know that he is receiving these petitions as a reminder of lives lost in truck-related crashes, and also of his statement, “I can promise you tangible progress within a short period of time,” which he made to the Truck Safety Coalition, when we met with him regarding vital truck safety issues on September 12, 2013.
We are specifically asking Foxx to:
Raise minimum levels of insurance required for truck drivers–which has not been done for over 30 years.
Decrease driver fatigue and monitor their hours on the road with Electronic Logging Devices.
Take needed steps to improve underride guards, which prevent vehicles from sliding under trucks–causing horrific injuries and tragic deaths.
For more information on truck safety issues and to sign up for Truck Safety Coalition’s newsletters and updates, please visit the TSC website: http://trucksafety.org/
These days, when we are traveling on the expressway, our conversations are interspersed with periodic comments like:
“Look at that one! It’s all rusty and bent!”
“Can you believe that one?! It’s all broken off on one side!”
“That one doesn’t even have anything in the middle!”
What are we talking about? Underride guards.
Before May 2013, most of us did not even know what an underride guard was. Now we know that the condition of an underride guard can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.
An underride guard is just what it says it is: a piece of equipment fashioned into the back of a semi-trailer which can help to guard against a vehicle riding under the truck in the event of a crash—thereby preventing horrific injuries and death.
On May 4, 2013, AnnaLeah and Mary Karth were in a truck-related car accident. AnnaLeah died at the scene of the accident. Mary died a few days later due to her injuries.
This website is dedicated to preventing more deaths in truck-related accidents from happening. Specifically, the Karth family is working to raise awareness about three issues related to truck safety: minimum liability insurance levels, driver fatigue, and underride guards. More information can be found on the pages specific to those issues.
And the Facebook posts from the first few years after the crash can be accessed in chronological order through our Journey Through Grief Page on this website: Journey Through Grief.
AnnaLeah, full of peace, forever 17, and Mary, full of joy, forever 13. We are thankful for the years that we had them in our lives. We know that, by faith, they believed in Jesus as their Savior & Lord. And because of that, we have the sure hope that we will see them again—and be with them forever.
