S11Ep4 The Silent Killer on Our Roads: Destroys a Family

What really leads to a fatal road accident? Could it be something as common as fatigue? This episode of Safe Talk with Safe Start is a gripping exploration of a tragic real-life automobile accident, where a family lost their lives on a routine journey home. 

Hosts: Danny Smith and Tim Page-Bottorff
 
https://safestart.box.com/s/pj8706zgeezzutl5bfepftpdyznc44ii

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Fatigue's Deadly Consequences in Road Accidents

Danny Smith 0:08

Welcome back to Safe Talk with Safe Start . I'm Danny Smith , and joining me today is the cohost of the podcast , Tim tim Page-Bottorff Page-Bot-Orff . Tim , how's it going today ?

Tim Page-Bottorff 0:16

Hey , Danny , it's about what you'd expect here in Phoenix in August it's literally hot . Pool temperature is 99 degrees and it doesn't even provide any relief there . So , yeah , that's what it's like today , but hey , I'm glad to be here .

Danny Smith 0:31

Yeah , it's so much for dry heat , right ? I always say it's kind of like a convection oven is all that is , especially when the wind gets up . It's been a pretty brutal summer here so far , the past few weeks in central Alabama as well . Not quite as hot as you are , but our humidity is a bit higher and I checked this morning even the water temperature at the lake here is the water temperatures in the mid to upper 80s , so we're pretty warm here as well . So , all right , now we got the weather forecast and maybe the griping about the weather out of the way .

Danny Smith 0:59

The reason we've asked Tim here and we're both here today is we really want to go through a bit of an accident scenario with you , and I'll provide some of the details and then Tim will play the role of an accident investigator , if you will . Since it's an automobile accident , we'll kind of ask him to kind of play the role of police officer in this as well . And a bit of a warning with this podcast . This is looking at a real accident that happened back a few years back . It's a story that our producer and fellow senior consultant , Kevin Cobb , shared in our workshops years ago . That's well , it's just truly heartbreaking . In fact , some of you may find it a bit disturbing , but we feel it's like it's really important because it illustrates so much about what we talk about with human factors . We've placed a few pictures of the incident in the show notes so you can go take a look at those if you'd like as well . All right , ready to roll , Tim ? I believe so . Let's do it All right .

Danny Smith 1:55

So here's what we know .

Danny Smith 1:56

The story is about a family that is returning from a family reunion in the city of Beaumont , Texas , and they're traveling back home to Fort Worth .

Danny Smith 2:07

That's about a five , five and a half hour drive if the traffic's light , and it sounds like , from the way we read the story , that the family began the journey late in the evening so that the kids would hopefully sleep most of the way home . And let's face it , as parents , we've probably all done something like that from time to time , just in order to make the drive peacefully and hopefully with a bit of quiet in the vehicle . Right , and the road where the accident occurred is a three- lane highway north , south , and the family is now , as they've been driving along less than an hour from home . And we have an eyewitness to the accident as well . Who says they saw the family Suburban in the left or the passing lane suddenly dart across the slow lanes of traffic and when they did they literally slammed right up under a parked 18 Wheeler or a transport truck . And one of the witnesses' comments was just really really haunting to me . They said it's like they didn't even see it .

Tim Page-Bottorff 3:11

You know . All right , danny , I'm already got questions and so I got to ask who was driving . I mean , how fast were they going and what were kind of the road conditions of the day ? I'd also like to know if you know this and probably in the story , but what do you know , if there are any skid marks that would indicate that they were breaking or was breaking ?

Danny Smith 3:27

All those are great questions and those are the type of things we'd certainly be looking at right . First of all , who was driving ? It was the father of the family that was driving , and the police estimate that he was going around 65 miles per hour based upon the damage to the vehicle , and 65 , by the way , was the posted speed limit , so he wasn't speeding . Road conditions were dry , no skid marks at all , didn't look like he braked at all . It literally looked like they just slammed into the back of the park truck at full speed .

Tim Page-Bottorff 3:59

I think we wouldn't know this really at the scene , but surely did they run a kind of a talk screen on this guy .

Danny Smith 4:05

Sure , and that's probably one of the first things people would think about as well . Right , they did that and everything came back normal no drugs , alcohol , anything in his system .

Tim Page-Bottorff 4:15

Okay , well , shees man , I even hate . I kind of hate to ask this question , but on an accident scene and even as law enforcement you're kind of an officer of the court . So I mean , how was his finances , what was his home life like ? I even asked this because if it was a suicide attempt and again as an officer of the court you really have to determine if it's a suicide attempt and so that should kind of insurance is off the hook . So do you think that was involved ?

Danny Smith 4:41

Well , here's what we know . The father himself was an architect , the mother was a stay at home mom and , by all accounts , talking to friends and family members , the two of them had been very happily married for 15 years . They were both very active in their church and , as far as the kids go , the teachers reported that they were all excellent students and all seem very happy and very well adjusted .

Tim Page-Bottorff 5:05

I'll slow my roll here , so I'm going to go ahead and rule suicide out then . And remember so , police officers , again , our officers of the court , and so in these situations they've got to consider all possible causes . I mean , what about , like equipment failure , was there ? Was there even an issue with that ?

Danny Smith 5:23

You know that's a great question as well and I really don't know how the police ruled that out , because the suburban they were driving in , as you can imagine , was really really torn up . But they did examine things like the brake , the steering and things like that as best they could and they did rule out vehicle failure . So , recapping here , we spent all . They spent all the day at the family reunion on a Sunday . They were driving home late . The accident happened in the late night , early morning hours , less than an hour from home . So they've been on the road probably four , four and a half hours , I guess we could say . And we had the witness who said that the driver went from the fast lane over into the past the two lanes so slow lanes of traffic before crashing under the big rig like he didn't even see it . Right .

Tim Page-Bottorff 6:08

Let's say it's likely that he probably didn't see it . I mean , it sort of sounds like he fell asleep though , crossing in front of our witness slamming into the big rig , and all that while considering there were no skid marks .

Danny Smith 6:25

That's really the conclusion the officer at the same came to , unfortunately as well .

Tim Page-Bottorff 6:30

Yeah . So perhaps kind of even a case of rushing just to get the kids back home and get to school on Monday . And I'm not the one to judge this poor man , but , with the benefit of hindsight , a hotel room for the night is a pretty cheap life insurance and again , kind of in hindsight , who cares if the kids miss a day of school ? Can you in this story , Danny , can you give me the number of total fatalities ?

Danny Smith 6:55

Yeah , Tim . Unfortunately, it was six , and all that included the mom , who was 35 years old at the time , and five of the children 14- year-old Crystal , 13-year-old Israel Junior , 12- year- old Tim, 7- year- old Jordan, and year 5-year-Candice . The only ones from the family that survived were the children's father , who was driving he was 35 at the time and then one of the younger sons , Aaron , who was 10 years old at the time .

Tim Page-Bottorff 7:26

Yeah , that's tough to absorb right now . You know your head nod . It kind of teaches you the dangers of the fatigue and , as Kevin always put back in the workshops , kind of get those shots across the bow .

Tim Page-Bottorff 7:39

And so does this carnage ? So then the question to me I'm having a hard time absorbing this . But the question then becomes how you react to the warning shots or the shots across the bow , and I'm going to speculate here , but I think it's a good guess that this didn't happen on the first head nod . So it sounds like he did what a lot of us sadly do , and blow it off and then kind of spin that luck wheel again . What we need to do is something more effective than just that .

Danny Smith 8:14

Yeah , you know , and just relying on that luck factor isn't enough . You know the scary thing , like you just mentioned , Tim , we've all been there . You know we've all driven when we probably were too tired to drive . We've all had those head nods from time to time and , frankly , ignored them from time to time Right , and I don't . Even when the girls were learning to drive , I talked to them about the experiences I had when I was fatigued behind the wheel and nodding off behind the wheel even for just a moment , just in the hopes that they wouldn't repeat my mistakes .

Tim Page-Bottorff 8:47

You know , I did the same with my kids . I kind of also shared with them that fatigue is one of those physiological problems . I mean , it can be psychological , but in this case physiological and it's a matter of like scientifically . You have lower levels of oxygen in your blood . So you don't think now I in my mind I'm going to hold up air quotes here , but having a yawn in the middle of driving is kind of one of those things that your body is telling you you're trying to boost your oxygen levels . So it literally happens automatically .

Tim Page-Bottorff 9:21

And most of us , all of us , you're all , you're all hardwired to fight fatigue , and so for me that's one of those examples that you get , and you know , as Kevin so eloquently put shots across the bow .

Tim Page-Bottorff 9:33

How many times did you yawn , how many times did you nod ? So what to do when driving and encountering that yawn ? Ultimately you need to get some sleep . But there is one thing you can do to stave off fatigue and pull off the side of the road , make sure that it's in a safe spot and by safe I mean like a well-lit area or even like a parking lot get out of your vehicle , do a brisk walk around your car , and it doesn't matter what people say or that , while they judge , you will going around your vehicle , but again , walking around your car actually injects that O2 that your body is needing , and so to get your blood flowing and get a temporary boost to your O2 levels , keeping that in mind , that actually is a really good temporary fix , although still a bandaid , but it's still better than just kind of dismissing the yawn and dismissing the nod so ultimately , you got to get some rest .

Danny Smith 10:28

I believe Sure yeah , and you know , often when I'm driving and fatigued I start noticing little things , maybe even before the yawn . For me , when I start getting tired , I start noticing just a bit of weaving within my lane , not even hitting the rumble strips or anything like that , just a bit of a deviation from straight , if you will . And the other thing I notice a lot when I'm tired I tend to slow down just a little bit , so it can be a , you know , increasing speed or decreasing speed . But for me I tend to look down and notice , wow , I'm only driving 60 and a 70 or something like that . Usually that's a little more than 70 and a 70 , but we won't go into that right now . But anyway , yeah , when I'm tired I do definitely slow down . So for me it's looking for little things like that as well , you know .

Danny Smith 11:16

And then we've all heard these crazy things that we all try to do as opposed to , like you said , stopping getting hotel room for the night or just getting out and walking around . I mean , we've heard so many different things that , well , to be honest , they probably don't work . You know , rolling down the window , cranking up the AC or the radio had one guy said that he would take a $20 bill and put it in his hand and hold it out the window and that way he could make sure that he was concentrating on holding on to the $20 bill . And I guess if he was really tired he'd hold 100 .

Tim Page-Bottorff 11:47

I don't know , but anyway , these things don't work right yeah , I even told you that story a couple weeks ago when I was driving from Purdue , from Nashville , to Paduca , that two- hour , two- and- a- half- hour drive , leaving Vegas on the red eye , coming into Nashville and eating that caramel corn one kernel per mile , yeah , the , the getting out of the car and getting the sleep . You know , we were at the workshop and we remember we had people telling us that all the things that they used to do , and I even had a guy tell me that he rolled his hair up in the window when he dozed off . Of course, he caught himself back up and you know I was falling forward and doing the yawn , that hair being stuck in the window , and bring him back up . I know we've done all these things .

Danny Smith 12:31

Yeah , and I don't think the hair thing is going to work for me or you either one at this point in our lives to him , so yeah .

Tim Page-Bottorff 12:39

Okay , let's , let's not go there . We will go there .

Danny Smith 12:41

Okay , you know , even if we had the hair , you know , I like your idea of getting out and moving around , getting the oxygen going again . That that's huge In SafeS tart terms . What you really have done there is you self- triggered on fatigue and , as we talk about in SafeS tart Now you've got an option . Then , when you self- trigger on one of the states , you've got the opportunity to take action and that's what we we suggesting you do here . You know , look for those telltale signs , like the yawns , like the deviation in your path while you're driving , and when those happen , don't ignore them . You know , stop for a few minutes , get out , move around . It's a great response , right , so it's , it's a part

Hazards of Fatigue Driving

Danny Smith 13:21

of self- triggering . Anyway , Tim , thanks for being here and for doing a bit of the role played with this today . I think this is a really , really sad story , obviously , but it is a great reminder for all of us about some of the hazards that are associated with fatigue driving . So it's probably a good place for us to wrap this one up as well .

Tim Page-Bottorff 13:39

Yeah , Danny , it's a pleasure for me , and thank you so much for having me again , and I look forward to seeing you down the road as well .

Danny Smith 13:46

Sounds great . So , on behalf of Tim , myself and the entire Safe Talk team , thanks for listening today . Please remember to share this important episode with others , particularly if you have people who are working on shift work or just driving long distance . I was on- site with a group this week where one of the gentlemen there said he had a three- hour daily commute , about an hour into work and two hours home each day . So we certainly talked about the importance of recognizing fatigue in the moment with him . But just just remember , you know , recognize those head nods , recognize the other telltale signs going on there and make sure you take action when those happen . For Safe Talk with Safe Start . I'm Danny Smith . Have a great day .