We have launched the Stop Underrides Bill Petition today. Please sign & share. Public support is crucial to ending Death by Underride. #underrideawarenessweek
On 12/12/2017, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Rubio and Congressman Cohen will introduce the Stop Underrides! Bill. This important legislation will save countless lives.
DATE: TOMORROW, Tuesday, December 12th
TIME: 10:15 AM
PLACE: Senate Visitors Center 212
United States Capitol Visitors Center
First St NE
Washington, DC 20515
I can’t tell you how it felt to look online and find my daughter’s book collection all thoroughly catalogued. I knew that she had a LibraryThing account where she had kept track of her extensive set of books. But never until just a few moments ago had I looked it up.
Most of her books are boxed up and in storage because our current living situation did not have space for them. In a few weeks, we will be moving to a house where we will be able to organize her books on shelves like she would have wanted. So I had asked her brother and sister recently if I could somehow look her account up — thinking I would need a password or something. Lo and behold, they said that she was identifiable by looking up the author Rosemary Sutcliff. AnnaLeah, they said, owns one of the most extensive Rosemary Sutcliff collections in the world (at least among the LibraryThing membership).
Having a few moments to sit down tonight at the computer while I was actually thinking about it, I decided to try and find her account. She did not use her own name but I was able to sleuth it out, and I found her! I found my daughter.
I found the three books which she was reading when she last posted on her account — quite probably just before her death — knowing AnnaLeah. They were perhaps even with her in the car on that trip to Texas.
She read 47 books in 2013. I even found the last book she ever finished, or at least recorded, on May 2, 2013 — two days before our crash. The Storm by Frederick Buechner
How many more would she have read in that year? How many would she have read in her lifetime? How many more books would she have added to her collection? What books might she have written? What literary worlds might she have created for others to enjoy?
Such a bittersweet treasure to have this part of her who is no more — who had so much more living to do.
And I’m quite sure, that one of AnnaLeah’s “friends” on Library Thingwas her sister, Mary, whose collection was much smaller and not so thoroughly catalogued — but just as treasured, I know. A member since July 12, 2012.
Here are some books — probably from her sister AnnaLeah — which Mary received on her last birthday — August 6, 2012:
Of course, I love the photoshoot which AnnaLeah staged of Mary reading one of AnnaLeah’s books (which Mary had not actually read):
To be honest, I hate the fact that I spend almost every waking hour figuring out ways to move the needle on comprehensive underride protection. I also hate the fact that AnnaLeah & Mary have no more chances to create new memories while the rest of us go on with our lives — getting older and making new memories without them.
Early in the day, as travelers made their way to Thanksgiving celebrations, WUSA9 reported that yet one more person has died due to a defective truck design.
Retrofitting the millions of trucks on the road could mean people like this man would live to see another day.
A man has died after a car crash on the Capital Beltway early Thanksgiving morning, police say.
Christopher S. Padilla, 30, of Alexandria, was killed when his 2013 Honda Civil crashed into the back of a parked tractor-trailer in Franconia, Virginia, early Thursday, Virginia State Police said.
The driver of the tractor-trailer had mechanical trouble early Thursday and pulled onto the right shoulder of I-495 just south of Exit 173/Van Dorn Avenue, police said.
He inspected his vehicle and was about to drive away when he felt the impact of the crash.
I just learned about an underride crash in Nevada on Sunday. The photo in the news report tells the sad and senseless story.
The semi driver began braking and made an improper left turn into the dirt center median with signage marked “No U-Turn” and “Authorized Vehicles Only.” The driver of the Kia then struck the trailer of the semi causing the Kia to be partially pinned under the trailer.
A 3-year-old girl who was injured in Sunday’s crash on northbound Interstate 15 near Moapa has died.
The girl was airlifted to Sunrise Pediatrics with critical injuries and succumbed to the injuries sustained in the crash.
Truck underride is what frequently happens when a passenger vehicle collides with a large truck. Because the truck was unfortunately defectively designed to be above the level of the crush zone of the smaller vehicle, the passenger vehicle goes under the truck and the crashworthy safety features of the car are not able to work. Or, to put it another way, the truck enters the occupant space of the passenger vehicle — too often resulting in horrific death and debilitating injuries.
Hundreds of people die this way every year — the victims of senseless, preventable death by underride. Yet, for decades, this problem has been left unchecked. Little has been done to preserve the occupant space and make truck crashes more survivable. Why is that?
Basically, the government has waited for the trucking industry to prove that it could do something to prevent these deaths. The trucking industry, for its part, has been waiting for the government to tell it whether or not, and how, to address this problem — before devoting R & D resources to it in order to come up with solutions. Meanwhile, the unsuspecting traveling public is left vulnerable and precious blood continues to be needlessly spilled on our roads.
Stalemate. Catch 22. Limbo. Standstill. Impasse.
The STOP Underrides! Bill will break this deadlock and get the ball rolling so that creative engineers can put effective underride protection on every truck — resulting in more truck crash survivors who can live to see another day.
This bill has been drafted by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. On December 12, 2017, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Rubio, and Congressman Steve Cohen will be introducing it in Congress. They are all seeking Republican co-sponsors for this long-overdue, life-saving legislation.
I am the survivor of a terrible truck crash. I am the mom of two daughters who did not survive. The difference? Their part of the car went under the truck; mine did not.
In the aftermath, I found out that the rear underride guard could have been made stronger to withstand the crash so that AnnaLeah and Mary might — like me — have been survivors of a terrible truck crash. I learned that, if effective underride protection was installed on trucks, we could save hundreds of people who die every year when a truck enters their occupant space. So now, I am a mom on a mission to make truck crashes more survivable.
How did it come about? In October 2012, Jerry and I moved to North Carolina with the three youngest of our nine children. Four of the nine were going to college in Texas. When they all came home for Christmas break, we got the news that our oldest daughter, Rebekah, had just gotten engaged. We planned a big trip to Texas in May for the celebration of a wedding, four college graduations, and two family birthdays (AnnaLeah turning 18 & Vanessa turning 4).
Mary baked a seven-layer engagement cake to surprise Rebekah when she arrived for the holiday. Rebekah asked me to sew her wedding dress and we shopped for a pattern and material. In the ensuing months, Mary (13) served as a model for her sister’s wedding dress, and AnnaLeah sewed a little bride’s dress for a surprise birthday present for Vanessa.
On May 4, 2013, we packed our Crown Vic and headed for Texas. But the trip did not go as planned and it turned out to be AnnaLeah’s and Mary’s last journey they would make on this earth. We came upon slowed traffic on I-20 in Georgia (from a fatal crash two miles ahead, two hours earlier). We slowed down, but a truck driver did not — hitting our car and sending it into a spin so that the car went backward into the tractor-trailer ahead of us. The rear underride guard failed to withstand the crash and the back of the car went under the trailer.
AnnaLeah and Mary were in the backseat. AnnaLeah died at the scene and Mary a few days later from her very serious injuries.
In the four years following that day, we have been working hard to turn tragedy into advocacy — including the drafting of the STOP Underrides! Bill soon to be introduced in the U.S. Congress to mandate the installation of technology to end these preventable tragedies.
In memory of Roya, AnnaLeah, and Mary (and countless others!), let’s pass comprehensive underride protection legislation in order to STOP every kind of Underride tragedy!
My daughter, Rebekah Karth Chojnacki, is an Instructor for a First-Year Experience class at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her students were required to do a community service project as part of the class. They chose to work on our underride prevention advocacy efforts.
First they gave us some feedback on our various social media sites. Then they divided up into three groups and did some research to determine just how many votes we would need to get in order to pass the STOP Underrides! Bill — especially those hard-to-get Republican votes.
Here are the results:
Making progress toward better underride protection is a team effort involving many, many people; and I am thankful for the students’ practical assistance. I hadn’t looked at the numbers previously and, when Rebekah shared the results of their class project, I thought, “Maybe this won’t be so hard to win after all!”
I met Ralph Nader in September 2016 at his Breaking Through Power Conference in DC. In June 2017, he asked me to write an Op-Ed on our efforts to bring about improved regulations for underride prevention.
