Tag Archives: Vision Zero

The Vision Zero Petition Book has arrived!

On May 5, 2014, we delivered 11,000 AnnaLeah & Mary Stand Up for Truck Safety petition envelopes to DOT in Washington, DC.

This time around, thanks to Jerry’s brainstorm, we are delivering the petitions in a bound copy of The Vision Zero Petition Book. All of the first 16, 516 signatures (and any comments which they made) will be in the book, along with the letters to President Obama and Secretary Foxx and a whole lot of other information which I compiled to spell out how we are asking them to implement our Vision Zero petition requests–creatively arranged by Isaac.

Two weeks from today, on March 4, we will be delivering the book to DOT and to various legislators as well as dropping off a copy at The White House. In addition, Care2 will be printing a binder with all of the signatures–up to printing time–and get it to us on February 29; we will take that along to deliver to DOT.

Five boxes of the book arrived today! Excited to see what  will come about!

Vision Zero Book 024

It’s not too late for names to be added! Sign & Share: Save Lives Not Dollars: Urge DOT to Adopt a Vision Zero Policy

Our Petition Delivery to DC on MAY 5, 2014:

How do you calmly tell someone your daughter died? A simple but excruciating phone call.

We have been members  of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) throughout our homeschooling years ever since the oldest of our nine started learning to read. This week I received a postcard from them wondering if we wanted to renew our membership because we had missed the annual date.

So I needed to call and tell them that we didn’t need to renew because Mary, our youngest who would have been sweet sixteen, was never going to finish high school.

A simple but excruciating phone call which had me hard put to verbalize the facts and weeping before it was over. . .

Mary will never realize many of her dreams; sign our Vision Zero Petition to ensure that someone else will:  Save Lives Not Dollars: Urge DOT to Adopt a Vision Zero Policy

1m newborn Mary and MamaMary and Mom at wedding 002

Minolta DSC

maryGertie reaching for Mary ...Susanna's film

.HSLDA Membership Renewal Postcard

 

Thank you, 19,000 signers on our #VisionZero petition!

19,000 007

 

Act now to save lives. After a crash, it will be too late; they will never come back.

After launching the Vision Zero Petition online, I waited a bit before I signed myself. I took a moment to decide what comment to make.

596: Marianne Karth, Rocky Mount, North Carolina,
United States
There is no one that this does not potentially impact in some way. We
are asking for bold and decisive action to reduce tragic, preventable crash
fatalities. Don’t wait until it touches you personally to move heaven &
earth to identify and require the best possible protection. Once a loved
one becomes a motor vehicle crash statistic, it will be too late–they will
not come back to you.

Sign & Share our Petition: Save Lives Not Dollars: Urge DOT to Adopt a Vision Zero Policy

Vision Zero Petition Book Cover

 

Time & A Grief Observed: Reflections from CS Lewis & AnnaLeah Karth:

  • Kind people have said to me, ‘She is with God.’ In one sense that is most certain. . . But I find that this question, however important it may be in itself, is not after all very important in relation to grief. . . You tell me, ‘she goes on.’ But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back. Be a circle, touching my circle on the plane of Nature. But I know this is impossible. I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get….It is a part of the past. And the past is the past and that is what time means, and time itself is one more name for death, and Heaven itself is a state where ‘the former things have passed away.’ (pp. 24-25)
  • Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. . .For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored. And that, just that, is what I cry out for, with mad, midnight endearments and entreaties spoken into the empty air. (p. 26)

USA, take a look at Canada’s Road Safety Strategy 2025; A Towards Zero Approach

What might the U.S. learn from Canada’s vision for having the safest roads in the world?

Check out some of their plans: Canadian Road Safety Strategy 2016

Canadian Road Safety Strategy 2025

Vision Zero in North America

“‘In short, don’t educate—or hector or threaten—for safety’s sake: design for it. After all, as [Neil] Arason [author of No Accident] is fond of quoting from a New England Journal of Medicine editorial, safety caps on prescription medication have saved more children’s lives than endless exhortations to their parents.

“When the life-saving potential of drivers and roads are exhausted, turn to what Arason considers the most important leg of the tripod, the vehicles themselves. They have been getting safer for decades for those inside them, at a steady if slow pace. In 1950,Popular Mechanics magazine was already campaigning for the seat belts that would not become mandatory for decades, urging its readers to order the belts from aircraft manufacturers and install them themselves. Helpful measures now would include banning the bull bars so deadly to pedestrians.

“Above all, governments should mandate the safety features already offered as options on higher-end cars, prompting new economies of scale that would force down prices. . .

“’I really think we are at a golden moment, a turning point,’ Arason says. ‘The technology is here, and only getting cheaper. They are doing these things in Europe. If we start with what Canadians can buy into—better regulations, safer roads, getting higher-risk drivers off the road—we can change things by 2035.

“‘I know in my heart we can get there: Zero fatalities.’”  http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-cure-for-killer-cars/

 

“I want to be famous somehow. I don’t know how but I just do.” Mary Karth, April 2013.

Mary on hammock

“I want to be famous somehow. I don’t know how but I just do.” Mary Karth, April 2013. (Photo 2005)

The Save Lives Not Dollars: Urge DOT to Adopt a Vision Zero Policy Petition reached 16,500 signatures today. I guess you “got” your wish, Mary, because a lot of people have heard about you and your sister and are standing with us to speak up for safer roads.

In memory of AnnaLeah & Mary Lydia Karth

A Mother’s Memories

AnnaLeah’s Statement of Faith 3

Came home to 16,003 Vision Zer0 Petition Signatures–& Climbing! #VisionZero

After hovering at around 15,900 signatures, today they started rolling in again. We have reached 16,000 and still climbing!

I am thankful for all of the support and am looking forward to taking all of those signatures to Washington, DC, on March 4.

Vision Zero Petition screenshot 001

Join the fun & sign here: Save Lives Not Dollars: Urge DOT to Adopt a Vision Zero Policy

A comment from Vision Zero Petition Signer #15,929. . .

From the Vision Zero Petition. . . a comment from signer #15,929

D. J. Young
11 hours ago
OH
“For a free and democratic society, Vision Zero is a moral obligation. For our leaders to tolerate 33,000 traffic-related deaths and untold disabling injuries per year is a national tragedy. None of these people should have been discarded through the application of a flawed cost-benefit analysis approach to highway safety policy. Please help every person have a safe drive home.”
Petition screenshot 001

Are you aware that Death by Motor Vehicle is one of the leading causes of death?

32,719 people died in U.S. traffic crashes in 2013.  Two of those people were my daughters, AnnaLeah (17) and Mary (13). That number decreased to 32,675 deaths in 2014–down by 44, but still far too many deaths in my book. In fact, early estimates show 2015 trending higher.

And how many of those deaths were due to truck underride and could have been prevented by a stronger, more effective underride protection system? Underride deaths are preventable and unnecessary and now is the time to take extreme action to reduce these deaths–no matter who caused the crash!

I survived a horrific truck crash in which our car was pushed by a truck into the rear of another truck. Backwards. My daughters in the back seat were not so fortunate; they went under the truck and the truck broke their innocent bodies.

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Mom Says $100 Truck Tweak Could Have Saved Her Daughters

A Mom’s Knee-Jerk Reaction to NHTSA’s Proposed Rule to Improve Rear Underride Protection

Let’s not wait for collision avoidance technology to kick in before kicking out preventable underride deaths!

The underride problem is just one example of the fixable problems we need to address. Michael Lemov has written an eye-opener, Car Safety Wars: One Hundred Years of Technology, Politics, and Death in which he tells us that in the more than 110 years since the first traffic crash in 1898, more than 3.5 million Americans have been killed and more than 300,000,000 injured in motor vehicle crashes [p.9]. This, I learned, is 3x the number of Americans who have been killed and 200x the number wounded in all of the wars fought by our nation since the Revolution [p.10]. Imagine.

Are you aware that Death by Motor Vehicle is one of the leading causes of deaths?

Worldwide it was estimated that 1.2 million people were killed and 50 million more were injured in motor vehicle collisions in 2004.[2] Also in 2010 alone, around 1.23 million people were killed due to traffic collisions.[3] This makes motor vehicle collisions the leading cause of death among children 10–19 years of age (260,000 children die a year, 10 million are injured)[4] and the sixth leading preventable cause of death in the United States[5] (45,800 people died and 2.4 million were injured in 2005).[6] It is estimated that motor vehicle collisions caused the deaths of around 60 million people during the 20th century,[7] around the same as the number of World War II casualties

Lemov’s book sheds light on many things including the fact that, although the blame was often put on the driver for crashes in the 20th century, in fact crashes and crash deaths are additionally caused by other factors including environmental and vehicle factors. He uses a term which I had never heard before–post-crash injury or “second collision.” He describes it this way: ”

It is the collision of the occupants of a vehicle with its interior, or the road, after the initial impact of a car crash. Ultimately the creativity of a few scientists, doctors, and investigators. . . developed an understanding of what actually happens to a human body in a car crash. . . Researchers gradually developed ideas they hoped would prevent this second collision. [p.16]

We can thank these researchers for paving the way for improved vehicle safety, including things like seat belts, air bags, and even car seats that lock in position. But, for far too long, it has been a major battle –as Lemov says, a car safety war — to bring about changes which will save lives.

Our own crash demonstrated the many factors which can contribute to the occurrence of crashes as well as to the deaths and horrific injuries which too often occur as a result. We learned the hard way that many of these are preventable and that Our Crash Was Not An Accident.

Following our truck crash, on May 4, 2013, we have learned more than we ever wanted to about traffic safety issues. We took the AnnaLeah & Mary Stand Up for Truck Safety – Save Lives and Prevent Injuries! Petition to DC on May 5, 2014 and helped to initiate an update in the underride protection for tractor-trailers.

Following that, we worked to promote underride research and have helped to organize an international Underride Roundtable on Thursday, May 5, 2016, when researchers, government officials, and industry leaders will gather to discuss truck underride crashes and how to reduce the risks for passenger vehicle occupants, bicyclists, and pedestrians. We will explore the scope of the problem and how regulation and voluntary action can help address it. There will also be a demonstration of underride guard performance in a crash test.

But, along the way, as I engaged in safety advocacy efforts — calling, emailing, and meeting with legislators — I quickly realized that all too-often it was 2 steps forward 3 steps backward. I began to ask, “Why is it so difficult to get anything done to save lives?” and “Why isn’t the best possible protection being adopted?”

I learned that one of the biggest obstacles was that public policy and more specifically DOT rulemaking is impacted by a requirement for cost/benefit analysis which tips the scale in the favor of industry lobby and the almighty dollar and makes a mockery out of the word safety. Human life becomes devalued in the process when a safety measure is rejected because it “may not have significant safety consequence.”

This is illustrated in the history of Federal rulemaking on truck underride guards outlined by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, where it was indicated that in

1974: US Secretary of Transportation says deaths in cars that underride trucks would have to quadruple before underride protection would be considered cost beneficial.

I determined to battle such an inconceivable, incomprehensible, and unconscionable attitude and determined to find a better way to protect travelers on the road. After talking with numerous engineers who either were convinced that safer underride guards could be made or had already designed ones, I also discovered a global movement that calls for the reduction of crash deaths and serious injuries: Vision Zero – An ethical approach to safety and mobility.

After launching an online petition Save Lives Not Dollars: Urge DOT to Adopt a Vision Zero Policy on September 29, 2015, I discovered that an Executive Order had been signed by Clinton which had set in place the cost/benefit analysis rulemaking policy which all too-often delays or blocks traffic safety regulations. I immediately set out to petition President Obama to set a National Vision Zero Goal with the establishment of a White House Task Force to Achieve a Vision Zero Goal of Crash Death Reduction. Furthermore, I believe that it is necessary to cancel out the negative impact of Executive Order 12866 in order to end this senseless war over safety. That is why I am asking President Obama to sign a new Vision Zero Executive Order.

Why are we devoting our lives to pushing for a DOT Vision Zero policy? Because I truly believe that it can have an impact not just on truck safety but on all issues related to highway and auto safety–including auto safety defects, driver training requirements, all kinds of impaired driving (including distracted driving, drunk driving, and driving while fatigued), and proven national traffic safety standards which should be adopted by all states.

Add your voice to ours!  Sign & share our Vision Zero Petition. Help us persuade President Obama to set a National Vision Zero Goal & to sign a Vision Zero Executive Order which will allow DOT to adopt a Vision Zero rulemaking policy.

We are taking these petitions (almost 16,000 signatures to date) to Washington, DC, on March 4, where we will be meeting with DOT policy officials to discuss the need for this radical change in how our nation protects the travelers on our roads.

It is time to stop acting like the value of a human life can be measured with and compared to corporate $$$. Every delay costs someone their life.

Let’s get it right, America. Somebody’s life depends on it. Lots of somebodies.

Let’s establish a White House Task Force to Achieve a Vision Zero Goal of Crash Death Reduction

In order to move the United States Towards Zero Crash Deaths, I am asking President Obama to first set a National Vision Zero Goal and then to write a memorandum which would establish a National White House Task Force to actually make things happen to reduce crash deaths across the roads of our country.

Here is my idea for what a Vision Zero Task Force would look like:

Establishing a White House Task Force to Achieve the Vision Zero Goal of Crash Death Reduction

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