Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
As I write this on May 26, ahead of Memorial Day, President Trump has just embarrassed himself in Brussels. See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/world/europe/donald-trump-eu-nato.html
And President Trump has arrived in Sicily. See https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-05-25/trump-arrives-in-sicily-ahead-of-group-of-seven-summit
Here’s hoping Sicily can inspire President Trump to greater humanitarian endeavors as it did for me.
In 1995, on a trip through Sicily, I drove through a large valley of crops, only fields of grain were visible. Then I came upon a roadside shrine to a child killed in a crash at that spot. I was on vacation from work at NHTSA at the time. I stopped and marveled at the deep love expressed in that shrine. It planted a seed in my heart and mind that grew into a dream that some day in the U.S.A. a virtual Memorial Wall – an electronic map could be created on which people suffering family tragedies could post photos and stories of their lost loved ones.
My dream was that this Memorial Map would have a purpose of motivating and helping people to organize demand for an end to such tragedies.
Today the internet technologies for creating such a Memorial Map are now available. I have a simple map by Congressional district with data on vehicle deaths by each year (2002 – 2015) available at https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=b6f7538422b5426294745e2affd24d8e&extent=-140.8255,18.5254,-48.8919,56.9713
Today the auto safety technologies are available to achieve an end to vehicle violence deaths and serious injuries in a decade.
Today the dream of a Memorial Map to organize people’s love into a force for an end to vehicle tragedies is still just a dream.
The U.S. Vehicle Violence Death Clocks continue to tick towards:
* 4 millionth fatality – at the rate of 100 deaths per day
* 1 billionth crash injury – at the rate of 400 serious vehicle injuries per day plus about 4,500 less serious injuries per day
See attached NHTSA data.
But the dream of Victims’ Voices growing into a powerful force for good lives on!
Lou Lombardo
