Roger Lanctot has posted a timely, informative, and productive article calling for helping First Responders on the deadliest day of the year.
See https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/help-first-responders-fourth-roger-c-lanctot?trk=prof-post
Will Hillary Clinton help Marianne Karth turn crash victim grief into good – safety for all of us, forevermore?
Hillary is a Mom and Grandma. Marianne Karth is a Mom and Grandma who tragically lost two young daughters in a crash. See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/blog/blog-fwdagrandmatobeheardandheeded/
Marianne Karth has been working diligently to end vehicle violence for us all ever since. She has obtained more than 20,000 signatures on a petition for a Vision Zero Goal for the nation. See http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/News/2016/03/08/Family-continues-fight-for-trucking-safety.htmlHillary should meet Marianne for the sake of all of us. Marianne lives in Rocky Mount, NC – a swing State that the Hillary campaign bus may visit – hopefully safely.
I hope that Hillary does this soon, before Donald Trump alone sends out a tweet to fix vehicle violence.
$X Trillions Losses – about $2 billion per day
As we in the U.S. approach our 4 millionth death from vehicle violence, we must remember that we still have no goal to end vehicle violence. There is a Vision Zero Goal that America still does not have – but others do. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
As my 7 year old grandson taught me “With great power comes great responsibility.” (He learned it from Spiderman.)
So why does the President of the U.S.A. not adopt a Vision Zero Goal? President Obama: Meet Marianne Karth. She has gathered 20,000 signatures on a petition to you to adopt a national Vision Zero Goal. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs. See http://annaleahmary.com/
In January of 2013, after 132,250 Americans had lost their lives to vehicle violence in his first term in office, President Obama had an opportunity.
As I wrote in January 2013, President Obama could have set a Kennedy-like goal to put Americans on the roads in safer new vehicles and bring them back alive in a decade. See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/MonthlyReport-January2013-Vol1.pdf
President Obama did not do so and now we, and he, face his leaving office with an estimated additional 135,569 American lives lost in his second term.
Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
Let’s help the Karth family. Only when enough of us do our part will we be able to end vehicle violence.
Write about her story of struggle. See and encourage others to sign her petition to do simple doable actions by the President at: http://annaleahmary.com/2016/07/victims-of-underride-collision-demand-vision-zero-and-an-independent-traffic-safety-ombudsman/
Let us emulate her citizenship and support her efforts.
Lou
Now Senator John Thune (R) of SD, up for re-election this year, has written to Tesla’s Elon Musk:“To address the foregoing issues, I request that you direct company representatives to brief Committee staff on the details of this incident, including the technology that was in use at the time, Tesla’s actions in response, and the company’s cooperation with NHTSA, by no later than July 29, 2016.” See https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2016/7/thune-seeks-answers-from-elon-musk-on-autopilot-technology
But there are 34 Senate seats up for election in 2016 and Senator Thune is expected to easily win re-election. Seehttps://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_elections,_2016?gclid=CLnT6c7I-s0CFcQkhgodhFINYwDo the people of South Dakota know that every year more than 100 people die of crash injuries in SD? See https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=e21e612d64654d75943f85a1a6035472
NY Times publishes an excellent article on victims of vehicle violence due to air bag defects known for more than a decade.
“In the late 1990s, General Motors got an unexpected and enticing offer. A little-known Japanese supplier, Takata, had designed a much cheaper automotive airbag.
G.M. turned to its airbag supplier — the Swedish-American company Autoliv — and asked it to match the cheaper design or risk losing the automaker’s business, according to Linda Rink, who was a senior scientist at Autoliv assigned to the G.M. account at the time.
But when Autoliv’s scientists studied the Takata airbag, they found that it relied on a dangerously volatile compound in its inflater, a critical part that causes the airbag to expand.
“We just said, ‘No, we can’t do it. We’re not going to use it,’” said Robert Taylor, Autoliv’s head chemist until 2010.
Today, that compound is at the heart of the largest automotive safety recall in history. At least 14 people have been killed and more than 100 have been injured by faulty inflaters made by Takata. More than 100 million of its airbags have been installed in cars in the United States by General Motors and 16 other automakers.
Details of G.M.’s decision-making process almost 20 years ago, which has not been reported previously, suggest that a quest for savings of just a few dollars per airbag compromised a critical safety device, resulting in passenger deaths. The findings also indicate that automakers played a far more active role in the prelude to the crisis: Rather than being the victims of Takata’s missteps, automakers pressed their suppliers to put cost before all else.”
