Last night right before I went to bed I stumbled upon a young woman who lost her life in a car crash. Marina Keegan was a recent Yale graduate when she was a passenger in the car with her boyfriend and they were in a crash.
Marina just had a book of essays published, post-humous.
On the cover stands a beautiful, young woman and in the book are her young thoughts and hopes.
She had a job lined up at the New Yorker. She had been President of the Yale College Democrats. She had so much going for her, it is tragic.
As always though I wanted to know what happened.
According to the Daily News:
Her dreams ended on a Massachusetts road on Saturday when her boyfriend, Michael Gocksch, lost control of his Lexus. The ride slammed into a guardrail, shot across the roadway, hit the opposite guardrail and rolled over twice, police said.
I had to read a few articles. In one someone said her boyfriend "Lost control of the car." One of my least favorite statements.
As if cars were "out of control."
Finally, I just found what happened according to the Huffington Post:
State police said speed wasn't a factor and both were wearing seatbelts. Keegan's father has said Gocksch fell asleep at the wheel.
The reason this story is in the news now, despite her dying in 2012, is because her book was just published.
The headlines quickly skirt of her "tragic car accident."
It is National Distracted Driver Awareness Month, why not mention that car crashes are the #1 cause of death to young people and MOST crashes are avoidable.
I recently wrote about the handful of recent Harvard grads who had died in road crashes.
I can only hope that somewhere at one of these institutions filled with our young, promising people, is someone who is passionate about road safety.
This is from her last essay:
“We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”
Driving drowsy is yet another form of distracted driving.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conservatively estimates that 100,000 police-reported crashes are the direct result of driver fatigue each year. This results in an estimated 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries, and $12.5 billion in monetary losses. These figures may be the tip of the iceberg, since currently it is difficult to attribute crashes to sleepiness.
For more drowsy driving statistics check click here.