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24 Things You Didn’t Know (or Forgot) About Safe Driving on Rural Roads!

Originally posted on the ADONA website – April 24, 2018

In developed countries around the world, it has long been known that rural roads are the location for far more deaths, measured against the total miles driven, than any other type of road or highway.  And this is equally true in the U.S.A.

“Twenty-five percent of all driving in America is on rural roads but this results, very disproportionately, in around fifty percent of all U.S. roadway fatalities.” —  Eddie Wren

There are several contributory reasons for this very serious situation:

Not one but two memorials, for two separate crashes on either side of this road at this one location in Illinois. (Photo copyright, 2012.)

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Increased Speed Limits Mean Increased Deaths (even on autobahns, not just interstates!)

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety [IIHS], lawmakers in Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York are considering raising their maximum speed limits.  However, IIHS research shows that in the USA between 1993 and 2017 such increases killed almost 40,000 additional people.

(Copyright image, 2014)

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Road Safety USA article about ‘Attitude’ published on Forbes

Road Safety Culture and Attitude in the USA

We are delighted to let our readers know that Forbes has published an interview with Eddie Wren, our Executive Director at Road Safety USA, regarding the comparisons between both attitude and road safety culture in the USA and Europe, and the impact these issues have on crash and casualty figures here in the States.

In Norway, it is an everyday event to see some of the vulnerable road users bending the rules, like this skateboarder riding among traffic on a major street, but not once did we see any hostility or impatience from drivers in the vicinity.  They simply slowed down and gave such people plenty space.  In terms of safety, it was wonderful to see.   (Copyright image, 2019.)

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Teen driver gets 3 years in 118 mph prom weekend crash that killed his friend

Memorial Page

Alexis “Lexi” Faye (17) NJ

 

Alexis Faye (Courtesy of Briana Moffat)

Around 5:30pm on Saturday, May 11, 2019, a teen driver crashed a Mercedes sedan at 118 mph in a 40 mph limit at Greendale Road, Fredon, NJ, resulting in the death of his friend Alexis “Lexi” Faye.

The driver has now been sentenced to three years in a state youth detention facility after pleading guilty to death by auto and violating a public safety law resulting in serious bodily injury.

RS-USA Comment:  Beyond the unspeakable tragedy of this incident, it is high-time the media — such as Fox News this time — became responsible enough to report such events as crashes, not accidents.  The driver on this occasion most certainly cannot claim that his alleged speed of 118 mph in a 40 mph limit is somehow “accidental,” or that the fact he then lost control of the vehicle, which ran off the road and rolled over, is somehow “accidental.”

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Memorial Page – Katie Berg, Caitlin Scannell, Sabrina Stahl (WI) Speed

Katie Berg (16),  Caitlin Scannell (17) and Sabrina Stahl (15)

These young people were killed in a crash caused by excessive speed, on Beechnut Drive, Campbellsport, Wisconsin, on February 4, 2012.  They were three of the nine girls in a Chevrolet Tahoe which went slightly airborne on a hill crest then slewed off the road, through a ditch, and rolled over repeatedly.

They were, in the words of one of the survivors, just “having fun” going fast.
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Memorial Page – Paul J. Miller, Jr. (21)

Paul J. Miller

August 3, 1988 — July 5, 2010

 

Road crash victim Paul J. Miller, Jr., killed on July 5, 2010.

At 3pm on Independence Day, 2010, Paul Miller hugged and kissed his mom Eileen farewell for what neither could possibly know would be the last time.

Paul was heading out to a party and ended up spending the night with friends, then headed for home the next morning, via PA State Route 33.

Paul’s thing in life was baseball and his passion was for the Yankees.

Eileen says that she always knew he was going to play for Lackawana College when he got there, but he knew by then that he was never going to play for the Yankees because he said “I’ve really got to buckle down and I’m just going to stick to my academics right now…”  Eileen knew when he said this that he had become a man.

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Memorial Page – Anna Schroeder plus Victims from U.S. Route 219, NY

Anna Schroeder

June 15, 1995 – Sept. 8, 2013

 

A pretty memorial to Anna Schroeder is now the only one visible on U.S. Route 219, between Springville and Ellicottville, Western New York.   But this road has a very grim history.

Roadside memorial to Anna Schroeder, Route 219 south of Springville, NY.

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Memorial Page – James Dean – 1955 (CA)

In order to highlight the dangerous but very commonly-held belief that  ‘it will never happen to me,’ and the extreme irony of Dean having recently made a Public Service Announcement for the NSC, about the dangers of fast driving on highways (see final paragraph), our very first Memorial Page is purposefully dedicated to one of the most famous Americans ever to lose his life in a car crash — James Dean, 1931-1955.

James Dean (Wikimedia Commons)

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