safety

World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims

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November 21st is World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, road crashes are the leading cause of death in people aged between five to 34 years in the United States. It is the leading cause of death globally for children and young people aged between 10 to 24 years, and the third leading cause of death globally among people aged between 30 to 44 years. Every six seconds someone is killed or injured on the world’s roads, including drivers, passengers, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians.

I'm sure most people know nothing about this and will continue not knowing. But now you know

 

Our New Contributor: Shannon Noel Webb

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Fix The Toaster is very excited to now have LA based mom, Shannon Noel Webb, contributing to our site. Shannon is naturally funny but she's serious about the impact of car safety. Well the people behind the cars, the whole sha-bang. Here is her first post.

Here is a list of the things I did this morning while driving in my car to work.  I cannot even believe it.  After talking last night and being uber aware I was still doing these things!  Habits run deep.  I like Fix The Toaster.  It is time to break our habits.  Jesus - look at this list!  I'm embarrassed, horrified and feeling fucking luck all in one!  I'm a good driver, a good mom, more responsible and ocd than I like to admit, I know people who have lost loved ones in car accidents, I bit my own tongue off in a car accident when I was 16,  I have been in a car accident where the car was flipped and totaled, and yet I STILL did the following WHILE driving myself to work this morning:

  1. Read the liner notes on a 1987 Tom Waits cassette tape
  2. Cleaned my cell phone headphones with a blanket that I dug out from under the seat and then sprayed with hand sanitizer
  3. Loved on my dog who had found his way from the back of the mini van to the front seat
  4. Fixed my twisted seat belt that was stuck in the contraption that is meant to make it tight should I be distracted and wreck
  5. Searched for, found and turned on the seat warmer
  6. Dug through my work bag for my cell phone charger and then searched for the outlet in 5 different compartments
  7. Reached behind me to the back seat window and detached the built in sun shade so that my dog could stick his head out of the open window
  8. Typed a note into my iPhone calendar and then set the alarm to remind me of this note later
  9. Googled, on my iPhone, the address of my dog's groomer, google mapped it and then programmed it to guide me there from my current location
  10. Ate and apple
  11. Fought with the sports bottled top of my Sigg
  12. Changed the radio station at least 3 times
  13. Searched for and found the button on the radio that adjusts the bass.  Adjusted the bass.  Then the fade. Then the treble.
  14. De tangled my new, gorgeous and very long necklace from my seatbelt
  15. Dug through my wallet to find my hidden nail file/cleaner and then cleaned out my thumb nail
  16. Checked to make sure that neither of my kids was hiding in the back of the car. They were not.  THANK GOD!

My only excuse is that I am not used to driving my min-van to work so it was somewhat new for me.  This would never suffice if, God forbid, I had hurt someone this morning.  And my children would certainly not have accepted this excuse if I had hurt myself, their Mommy.