When we got back home after the crash and were looking through our photo and video files, we found some short video clips of a short story which AnnaLeah had apparently written and which she narrated as Mary acted it out and Susanna filmed it with her digital camera in our backyard in Midland, Texas (circa 2009).
Remembering AnnaLeah (17) and Mary (13). Miss you every single day.
A Short Film Starring Mary & AnnaLeah; Screenwriter, AnnaLeah Karth
Somehow, this makes me smile and laugh every time I watch these two sisters in their silly, imaginative little film. It makes them seem so alive. How is it that they are gone from us?
I asked Neil Arason, a Canadian road safety expert, about his thoughts on the idea of a Traffic Safety Ombudsman. This is what he shared with me. . .
Hi, Marianne,
I think what you do right now is very close to that of an ombudsman. I can’t tell you how critical it is to have safety advocates. Most changes happen because of them.
If I think of good examples of road safety advocacy, they include people like you, and also Clarence Ditlow. Government needs to know people are watching them, and advocates do a good job of getting issues out into the mainstream media and that is extraordinarily powerful and important.
An office of the ombudsman would be similar to an advocacy centre except typically it is an arm of government, albeit one that has some independence. We need to have safety advocates who are completely independent and powerful, and then on top of that as many other tools and structures for change.
I think that a traffic safety ombudsman would be one more thing that would help the overall cause. Because it is essentially an arm of government, however, it will likely be much more difficult to set up, whereas Ralph Nader just went ahead and set up the Center for Automotive Safety (directed by Clarence Ditlow), and that was that. (Although Nader had some startup capital from events that began in the late 1960s.)
Nonetheless, anyone can get into the business of advocacy and set up a centre or whatever they end up calling it. Advocacy groups work toward wholesale change in the very way that road safety is treated, the priority given to it, etc.
The ombudsman type offices, I am aware of, exist so that folks can take complaints to them, and then the Ombudsman (and its paid staff) investigate those complaints with a view to resolving them. The ombudsman works to ensure “fairness” really in decision-making. I’m not aware of any examples of how an ombudsman would work in traffic safety because I am not aware of such a function today.
When people have complaints about some road safety failure, they largely take them to lawyers it seems. I am aware of examples of the role of the ombudsman in other government sectors like income assistance, where a citizen makes a complaint and goes to the ombudsman. This works well because the government agency really stands up and notices when they get a call from the office of the ombudsman, and they really make an effort to resolve the issue.
A traffic safety ombudsman could investigate complaints with a view to making large policy changes. I would imagine that many victims’ families have no idea at first how to navigate the system. Access to an ombudsman could not just help to investigate their complaint for them, but could give them all manner of advice about where to go and what to do, e.g., use a lawyer, go to media, lobby directly, point them to various agencies for help, etc., etc.
Imagine if the ombudsman had people like you who could share with them what they know about how to get things done. The ombudsman could, I suppose, be a bit of an “information broker” in addition to its role as complaint investigator. Such an office might help people to direct their energies in ways that will do the most amount of good.
I’m no expert on any of this, that is for sure, Marianne. The only thing I know, from my own experience, is that almost all changes come from outside government and from advocates, lobbyists and the media. These are the powers that governments all around the world seem to respond to. To follow then, we need as many mechanisms as possible to support more lobbyists, advocates, and media to focus on road safety. An ombudsman would help enormously with that.
We are asking for 100,000 Americans to sign our new Traffic Safety Ombudsman petition on WhiteHouse petition site. Once we get 150 signatures, it will become searchable on their website.
If we are able to get 100,000 signatures in 30 days — by July 31, then the White House has promised that they will respond to our new petition, which calls on President Obama to appoint a National Traffic Safety Ombudsman, who will be an Advocate for Safer Roads.
Why on earth am I asking for another government-funded worker — a National Traffic Safety Ombudsman? And whatever would that person do anyway? Read more here:
PLEASE NOTE: If you sign the petition, be sure to go to your email. We the People will send you an email which will say this in the subject line: “Almost done! Verify your Petitions.WhiteHouse.gov account.” Follow the instructions to verify your signature.
SAE just posted our request for engineering students and professionals to take on the pursuit of solving the deadly underride problem. Last year at this time, similar efforts led to connecting with Aaron Kiefer, crash reconstructionist/inventor, and Jared Bryson with his Virginia Tech Senior Underride Design Dream Team.
I have been reading and sending emails this week to the group which met at IIHS on June 24 to discuss recommendations to NHTSA on the underride rulemaking. It has been encouraging to see that the process is proving more helpful than anything that has been accomplished in the past to gain cooperation through collaborative communication. But it has also been discouraging to see evidence that compromise is being considered.
Then, I opened my email and saw that I had received a letter from NHTSA today — letting me know that they regretted not being able to accept our invitation to attend our Underride Roundtable follow-up meeting at IIHS on June 24, 2016.
They also said that they look forward to our recommendations and encourage our continued submissions to the public dockets for NHTSA’s rulemakings on truck underride safety.
They thanked us for our leadership and for partnering with them to improve roadway safety.
PLEASE NOTE: If you sign the petition, be sure to go to your email. We the People will send you an email which you have to reply to in order to confirm your signature is valid.
I was struggling yesterday with the sense that I am not adequately getting across the need for a Traffic Safety Ombudsman to facilitate a strategy to move our country more quickly toward zero crash deaths and serious injuries. And unless we embrace such a vision, too many lives will be lost when their deaths might have been prevented.
Why am I so convinced that we need a Traffic Safety Ombudsman? Because of the lives which I see shattered every day by preventable crash fatalities. And the 3.5 million traffic fatalities since the first one in 1898.
People like Mary and AnnaLeah. People like two of my facebook friends who lost loved ones (or have family members with life-altering injuries) due to truck crashes and were struggling yesterday with their frustration and anger and ongoing grief.
See the posts by these two families who shared their heartbreak, frustration, & anger about the devastation caused in their lives by preventable crashes:
How many broken hearts does that represent? How many more are yet to come?
And what do we get from those who could do something to stem the tide of Death by Motor Vehicle? Resistance. Opposition. And too often it leads to Compromise–settling for solutions that are ineffective and too often delayed. Basically, saving people from preventable crash deaths is not a national priority. And someday, it might impact you.
Take for example truck underride protection/prevention. The trucking industry has long resisted doing anything voluntarily above and beyond any shabby, inadequate regulations which might be imposed upon them. In fact, their opposition is quite probably the reason those regulations are so weak.
And they continue to resist an all-out, comprehensive technologically-possible solution to prevent DEATH BY UNDERRIDE. What is their biggest reason? Cost, of course. When the importance of crash testing a manufacturer’s underride guard with an actual crash test to prove its effectiveness is brought up, a concern is raised about whether small manufacturing companies can afford to do that kind of testing.
Well, I certainly know that crash testing is expensive and we have not been able to raise enough money through our non-profit, AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety, to support underride research crash testing. And in our efforts to find money for such an endeavor, I don’t see it as being made much of a priority. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate how we have seen some of the trailer manufacturers step up to the plate after receiving our letters asking for voluntary improvement. But is it really enough?
As far as I am concerned, if crash testing is what it takes to ensure that their product is safe enough to protect my family and they can’t afford it, well then, I’m sorry, but I would prefer that they shut down than endanger the people whom I love (and countless others as well)!
Now, I am not convinced that a solution couldn’t be worked out to help those smaller companies get their crash testing done. In fact, it was mentioned at our follow-up underride meeting on June 24 that larger companies could perhaps do some testing for smaller companies. Well, will they? Is there enough of a cooperative spirit to prove to me that Safety is not just a buzz word–that there is some actual concern about saving lives whatever it takes?
I’d like to put a challenge to the trucking industry which Senator Bobby Kennedy put to the automotive industry back in July 1965 — 50 years ago. I read about it in Michael Lemov’s informative book, Car Safety Wars. [By the way, I just have to say how cool it is to be able to Google the quote which I am looking for and be able to include it as a link to take you right to that quote in that very book. So, go look at it! And here is a link to a report on the hearing itself!]
Kennedy: What was the profit of General Motors last year? Roche [President of GM]: I don’t think that has anything to do. . . Kennedy: I would like to have that answer if I may. Donner [Chairman of GM]: The one aspect we are talking about is safety. Kennedy: What was the profit of General Motors last year? Donner: I’ll have to ask one of my associates. Kennedy: Could you please? Roche: (Pause)–$1,700,000,000 ($1.7 billion). Kennedy: What. . .? Donner: About a billion and a half. Kennedy: About a billion and a half? Donner: Yes. Kennedy: And you spent about one million dollars on this [safety research]? Donner: In this particular facet we are talking about. . . Kennedy: If you gave just one percent of your profits [to safety research] that is $170 million.
This rare challenge to the car manufacturers was reported by the press. General Motors promptly released a “corrected” statement saying that it had actually spent $193 million on “safety programs.” The figure was immediately challenged, since it appeared to include many activities that were unrelated to automobile safety. But, even if true, the figure was a small percentage of GM’s $1.7 billion annual net profit. Car Safety Wars, Michael Lemov, Google Books
So my question is to the trailer manufacturing industry specifically (and the trucking industry in general): What was your profit last year?
Second question: How much did you spend on safety research? And, more specifically, how much did you spend on underride research?
I’d really like to know the answers — not just for 2015 but for many years before as well. Because I’m not willing to compromise. There are too many shattered families, broken hearts, and lives ended far too soon.
Why on earth am I asking for another government-funded worker — a National Traffic Safety Ombudsman? And whatever would that person do anyway?
It would be a lot easier for you to understand if you were in my shoes. But I don’t want you to be in my shoes — continuing to grapple with the grief of losing a loved one in a preventable traffic crash. So I will try to describe, as briefly and clearly as I can, what I have in mind with this Traffic Safety Ombudsman Petition.
Basically, in the aftermath of losing two daughters, AnnaLeah (17) and Mary (13), due to a truck underride crash on May 4, 2013, we have discovered that millions have died in traffic crashes since the first one in 1898, that there are many reasons for that, and that trying to do something about those reasons is very difficult, time-consuming, and resisted. Meanwhile, while solutions are being delayed, people continue to die — often needlessly, because something could have been done to prevent their death, but was not.
There is often a political tug-of-war over these issues. An Office of National Traffic Safety Ombudsman (TSO) would be established to function outside of the political realm — untainted by the pressures of powerful lobbyists. Instead, the TSO would work with the existing government agencies, industry representatives, researchers, and safety advocates — listening to traffic safety concerns and speaking forth on behalf of matters of importance to traffic safety.
Currently, Traffic Safety is not even listed on whitehouse.gov as an Issue. This has got to change. It needs to become a national priority and we need an Advocate to listen to traffic safety concerns which are raised (in fact, actively seeking to make sure that they come to the surface) and then identify solutions and inform those who can do something about them.
Now I can do many things as an individual to raise national awareness about traffic safety issues. But my ability to motivate and facilitate change is way too limited. I don’t truly have the ear of leaders essential to the process. In fact, although my family and I have taken two petitions to Washington — with the agreement of thousands of people, they can too easily brush me away like a pesky fly. We need someone with the authority to demand an audience with the powers that be.
I have not heard one word from Washington, D.C., about our 20,000 Vision Zero Petition signatures. That’s a problem. Either they think they are already doing what that Petition requests (with which I would disagree) OR they don’t think that it is important enough to do anything about. That is something which we should all rise up about.
In fact, how I envision it is that the Traffic Safety Ombudsman would be the person to implement the requests of the Vision Zero Petition. Small businesses have a National Ombudsman. Why not do the same for the victims of tragic, preventable traffic crashes?
Makes sense to me. Because, really, who would be given the responsibility and authority to oversee these things otherwise?!
When I was reading my Bible this morning, I read a verse about Jesus ascending to sit at the right hand of the Father. What is He doing there? Advocating on our behalf, interceding for us, speaking to His Father and ours about our needs. Hmmmm, kind of like I would expect a Traffic Safety Ombudsman would do — only not in heavenly places (or not only) but getting the ear of those who can move heaven & earth to make our roads safer!
I don’t think that you need to worry about this costing the taxpayers a lot of money or creating an enormous new agency. Look at what our family has already done voluntarily and with the help of other concerned parties with our petitions and the Underride Roundtable, which we helped to organize, and the Tired Trucker Roundtable, which I have proposed. We have pulled together in communication and actual sit-down-together meetings diverse groups, such as government regulators, law enforcement, trucking industry, safety advocates, researchers, media, and victims. Organizations like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the Truck Safety Coalition (with their non-governmental funds), along with citizen contributions, have helped to finance such events — without emptying the pockets of taxpayers.
The Traffic Safety Ombudsman would not be replacing the safety functions of the government or watchdog efforts of safety advocacy organizations. Rather, the TSO would be working with them and getting them to work together — with the goal of SAVING LIVES as their primary and, in fact, sole responsibility. And there would still be the need to raise national awareness and involve citizens in advocacy efforts through social media and my recommended national network of Vision Zero/Traffic Safety Community Action Groups.
With a relatively-small budget for travel, office rental, equipment & supplies, and salary & benefits, even a one-person Office of National Traffic Safety Ombudsman — with endless possibilities for internships — could accomplish a lot. A lot more than I would be able to do here in my home in Rocky Mount, North Carolina — a retired home school mom, truck crash survivor, and broken-hearted mother.
Note: And I am not the only one who thinks so! Among others. . .
Bill Bronrott, Media, government & public affairs for healthy, safe & sustainable communities. Past US DOT Appointee, Maryland State Legislator, Congressional Press Secretary, sent out a Tweet last night about the petition:
Roger Lanctot, Associate Director in the Global Automotive Practice at Strategy Analytics, Driverless Policy Making, “I was reading an impassioned letter to the President by Marianne Karth on the issue this morning – impassioned because Karth lost two daughters to a motor vehicle accident involving a truck lacking under-ride protection. . .Karth binds her thoughts into a five-point appeal: ‘Would you (President Obama), in fact, make Traffic Safety a national priority–placing it on the list of important issues listed on whitehouse.gov and then do something about it, e.g., Appoint a Traffic Safety Ombudsman who would oversee all of this and be an Advocate for vulnerable road users (which includes us all) —untainted by political pressures?'”
Neil Arason, Author of ‘No Accident’, and believer in vision zero and the need to re-think everything about our roads, told me this after signing the petition, “I have signed the petition, and have just Tweeted about it. Having a traffic safety ombudsman is such a great idea!“
