Today I was a part of Ali Landry's annual RedCARpetSafety Event.
I was excited to be invited to have a booth there. Any chance to spread the road safety issue. I was dually excited because most vendors were there promoting car seats and installation. While those are important without us adults driving safely it doesn't matter about those. Well, you know what I mean.
We come first.
I had varied reactions.
First, I will admit I was the strangest booth there.
I was selling a concept rather then a product.
I was thankful to have Jeri right next to me in her booth. She was wearing a Wonder Woman costume because "Don't we need to be superheroes out there on our streets?" Says a mom who lost her oldest son to a distracted driver.
Yes, we do of course.
Jeri was brave enough to say to people what at first I was being too PC to say. She said, if we don't drive safe it doesn't matter what type of carseats you use.
The event had many pregnant moms and new moms.
One mom with a baby kept asking me, well what should I do, when I tried explaining Fix The Toaster to her. She asked me to stop telling her about Polly as it was making her anxious immediately.
I realized I needed to pitch to people the site a bit better.
I started telling them the site was a source of info for holding a community meeting, which I have done.
I had a few moms glare at me a bit when I gave stickers to their kids to give to them when they drove without their phones. And one dad flat out said, you better give those to your mom, laughing as he shook his head.
I wonder if people would laugh if I was talking about preventing pool drownings or gun shot victims.
I don't know what's funny about using your phone when you know it's dangerous.
A lot of people thought it was cool and a few were really interested and frustrated in their own neighborhoods and with their own schools.
I met a woman named Pat Hines whom I'm smitten with.
She's cool, smart and became an advocate after her best friend died in a horrific bike hit and run(it involved even worse details)
She has educated Los Angeles kids for years now, she's recognized nationally.
She said parents will not listen to the law, they will listen to their kids.
She said one day LAPD had a female cop go undercover and pretend to walk her kid across the street in a stroller, they ticket 140 people that day.
The next day they did it again.
They ticketed 90 people.
Many of the same people.
Many parents.
It's pathetic.
As I drove home on this cool and cloudy LA day I listened to some mellow music and thought about the darkness these women have encountered via road crashes.
Polly once accused me of worrying about stuff too much and that I would attract it because of my worrying.
I actually felt guilty after she died in the crash that my worrying caused it.
Which is ridiculous.
Sometimes I wonder, do I want to be around bad, bad things that have happened? Then I think, who am I to advocate for this? What am I doing? Or what should I do? Like that woman kept asking me.
But I did encounter darkness when Polly died.
I didn't cause her crash.
I've been an advocate even before she died, I just didn't know it.
For some reason this is a passion of mine.
It blows my mind and other road safety advocates minds that this comes off as radical to a lot of people.
What is radical about wanting our streets to be safer?
Who says so many people should die on our roads?
Today, I saw so many pregnant women and newborns.
I know people don't want to hear it but car crashes are the #1 cause of death to our young. And most of it's preventable.
I know that I also do this because I do not want my kids to be killed in a car crash.
No one does but yet it's going so far under the radar. This is my channel for my nerves and my anguish over losing my friend.
I'm comforted by these new friends I'm meeting and curious to see where this will all go.
I honestly don't think I'll live to see a huge change. I think it will change but not for awhile.
I can't wait for the day when people look back at us and think how crazy we were for accepting this as just normal.
