Dang! This driving accident is so sad!,...please be careful out there...

My wife an I were driving south on I-45 last night in her Tahoe. There was quite a bit of traffic, but there was enough open space to marginally zig and zag through it. Two Z28's passed me on the right (I was only one lane to the left of the far right lane) doing no less than 100 miles an hour. I'm guessing it had to be 120. It felt like we were standing still, and the wind going by shook her Tahoe.

I used to be young too, and I did stupid things. Still, I've mellowed and my first thought was "I sure hope I don't know the people they kill." Of course, the part of me that hasn't mellowed wanted to take a baseball bat and beat the living fuĉk out of those a$$holes.

I wish the legal driving age was 21.

And I wish speeds were electronically limited to the speed limit of the area you're driving in.

Who knows, maybe we'd get out 70 mph speed limit back.

 

Thats incredibly tragic


Sandra and Michelle Costilla were not wearing seat belts, Vinger said.

"A seat belt could have definitely played a role in either reducing the fatality count or the severity of the injuries in this particular wreck," Vinger said.

Because the passengers in the Expedition were not wearing their seat belts, getting to them was difficult, officials said.

Once rescuers removed the truck's roof, they discovered passengers were strewn on top of each other.
BTW:ALWAYS WEAR YOUR SEATBELT!!!!!!!!
DAMN, I saw a horrible accident about two weeks ago. The woman driver was lying in the middle of the instersection nowhere near her car. She was not wearing her seatbelt and was thrown like a ragdoll.

 

That's pretty bad. You can never be in such a hurry to not wear your seatbelt. That and the fact that both cars involved in the accident were all from the same family. What a terrible tragedy. I don't really see how it happened....cross the center line? Do I take that to mean they were side by side on the way to the hospital and one crossed over smashing into the other one?

Horrible....a new life coming into existence turns into a deadly nightmare. How can anyone not wear their seatbelt these days under any circumstances? And to think a cop ticketed me for not wearing a seatbelt when I always wear one under every circumstance...even if I'm just driving down the road to the store in a residential neighborhood.

 

This happen to be a friend of mine.

We met while I attended the Universtiy of Texas.

I got the terrible news yesterday.

No Joke.

God Bless Mario and his family.


Carlos

Here is a better link from a Austin media source.

http://www.news8austin.com/content/top_stories/Default.asp?ArID=34305

 

Truly horrible.

I recall a not dissimilar story in Arlington a few years ago that has continued to stick with me. A father is on his way back home from the hospital after his wife has given birth to twins (on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I believe). In the car is his mother-in-law and toddler daughter. Father apparently falls asleep at the wheel and crosses the grassy area between sides of Interstate 20 eventually crashing headlong into a couple of cars on the other side. Father, daughter and mother-in-law are all killed along with one or two other people from other cars.

 

I don't think both cars were from the same family. That stretch of FM road only has two lanes (one northbound and one southbound). The guy driving the Caravan crossed the center line and swerved into the Expedition. The speed limit is 55 mph, but even that is too high for a two lane highway with no center lane or emergency shoulder.

 

Smokey is correct, the two cars belonged to two different people, not from the same family.

6 total family members in the Expedition, 3 died including unborn child(boy 8lbs). Father died on impact, Daughter and unborn child died later at the hospital.
The mother and their other 2 children are still recovering in hospital now, with many broken bones and other various injuries.

Single occupant in Caravan was not from the same Costilla family, he also died on impact.

I hope to be able to visit them next week.

God Bless

 

Yeah....I must have misread it. I confused myself trying to place each person in each car and trying to picture the accident in my head not being familiar with that road and all. I'm clear now. Thanks. It's so sad that nobody appeared to be wearing a seatbelt at all. That guy must have dozed at the wheel. I hate car accidents....I hope I never get in a serious one. That is one of my worst fears in life. Unfortunately, it makes me tend to drive more aggressively because of all the flakes on the road. I have to get my position and if I'm in a position on the freeway that feels unsafe...I will move to get out of it. But, some things like this are just unavoidable and all happen by chance no matter how careful you are.

 

What is really tragic about this is that there is probably no pregnant woman in labor who would ever wear her seatbelt. And how can you blame her?

Imagine her laying across the back seat and her mother kneeling in the middle of the Expedition, grasping her hand and stroking her forehead.

terrible.

 

I feel sorry for the family.

However, that said the driving age does not need to be 21. I hate to say this, but there always will be a few people who don't listen no matter how many times you say something.

Do I consider driving dangerous at times? Yes.

Consider I'm 18(will be nineteen this summer) and have dealt with all this recently, except I was the reverse, unassertive because my instruction wasn't good. The teacher assumed everyone knew how to drive coming in and when I didn't he decided to mouth off to my friends in the class.

Anyways, now I know how to handle myself when driving, and also I think a big problem is people driving under the influence, esp young kids, no matter how much you tell them to stay or drive them home, their egos get in the way.

Also, this reduction of speeds to 55 in houston is going to backfire extremely.

Finally, I just think a lot of this can be prevented with more extensive teaching before you get a car. Because even at 21, I don't believe these mistakes will vanish immediately, plus you'll just have kids driving for their parents before then anyway, like alcohol, in that when you tell someone they can't do something it only makes them do anything to do it now.

 

I like the intermediate licensing laws they have in Washington and Texas. That way, young drivers are not able to attain a full fledged license until they have a year of experience, or turn 18.

The best tool a driver can have is experience. If someone was to start driving at 21, they would still lack the necessary experience to make good decisions on the road. There's no doubt in my mind that 16 year-olds should NOT be out driving without adult supervision. They not only lack experience, they lack maturity. The difference between 16 and 18 year-olds is huge.

As for the accident, it is terribly sad. Still, everyone besides the pregnant woman should have been wearing their seatbelts. There's no excuse for not doing so.

 

When these new graduated driver's license rules were being debated, we had a thread on this board about it. As it turned out, it wasn't the 16 year-olds who were the most dangerous. Your odds of dying in a motor vehicle accident are actually highest at age 19 (for males. 18 for females) when stated as deaths per 100,000 people.

And the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety noted that while 804 16 year-olds died in passenger vehicle crashes in 2000, 997 17 year-olds died, 1,203 18 year-olds died and 1,206 19 year-olds died in passenger car crashes in 2000.

And let's not even get into gender differences that show males are more than twice as likely to die in passenger vehicle crashes than females (as a matter of fact, 16 year-old females are statistically safer than 29 year-old males, at least as far as deaths per 100,000 people is concerned).

In 2000, 431 16 year-old drivers were killed in car crashes, compared to 559 17 year-olds, 743 18 year-olds and 775 19 year-olds.

And the argument about 40% of fatal crashes happening in hours that make up 40% of the day seemed somehow wrong to me, too (though it was used to help get these graduated licenses passed). Plus, why use 9pm to 6am as the example to get a law passed that restricts driving between Midnight and 5am. If the state is actually accomplishing anything by putting in said Midnight to 5am restriction, why not use the stat of crashes between Midnight and 5am rather than a stat of crashes from 9pm to 6am? It could well be (and I've not seen the stat broken down hour by hour) that Midnight to 5am might actually be safer, statistically speaking, than 9pm to 11pm, for example. It may well be safer than 3pm to 5pm for all I know as I haven't seen the stats (Remember, 60% of all fatal crashes involving teens happen between 6am and 9pm).

Personally, I think the new restrictions on Texas driver's licenses are reasonable, but I hold out little hope that they will stem the tide of fatal car crashes.

But the main thing that cheeses me off is seeing statistics bandied about to support a cause when the statistics show something completely different. If our goal is really to save lives, we need to restrict male drivers under the age of 30 and over the age of 70.

 

That's interesting. The statistic I heard was that the 16 year age group gets into twice as many fatal accidents as the 19-99 age group.

I'm not sure where I heard that, though.

We'll have to give it a few years to see if the new regulations are effective.

 

Except that we won't be able to tell, really. The stats have been trending downward, if fewer 16 year-olds or 17 year-olds are involved in fatal accidents over the next couple of years, will it be because of the law (as supporters will likely claim) or will it simply be because of a general downward trend already underway?

If the fatal crash statistics for 16 year-olds does drop in a significantly sharper percentage than for other teens, I suppose we can point to that as having at least something to do with the new law (though maybe not since 46% of the 16 year-olds who died weren't behind the wheel in the accidents that claimed their lives. I would assume that at least some of those were in cars not driven by other 16 year-olds). But it seems to me that concentrating on the drivers most likely to be involved in fatal automobile crashes would be a better way to spend the state's time and effort. I mean, if you're goal is to make the streets as safe as possible, why not start with the group most likely to die in a passenger car crash?

Here's some more stats from the US Department of Transportation:

14.4% of drivers aged 15 to 20 involved in fatal passenger car crashes in 2000 had an invalid driver's license. 24% of the total had previous speeding convictions. Just over 29% of the total had alcohol in their system at the time of the fatal crash (21% above .10 BAC).

The only way to make 16 year-olds the most dangerous subset is to figure it on total miles driven rather than on straight numbers. The irony of this is that these new graduated licenses may well make 16 year-olds seem even more dangerous since it will likely reduce the already smaller number of miles driven by 16 year-olds (since it is likely 16 year-olds will actually be forced to drive less, and that may not correspond to a drop in the number of fatal accidents).

 

New update. Directly from a family member.

Mario (father) & Christopher (his son) were wearing their seatbelts. Also the family has donated the baby's heart to another baby that was waiting for one. And also another family member donated his viens, I believe that was all they could use, considering the extent of the accident.

 

I often wonder. . . why make a car that goes 120
or even 90 . . . .when their is nowhere in the US you
can legally go that speed.

Maybe all cars should have a governor
[isn't that the thing on school buses keeping them from going over 60 or something]

rocket River

 

actually, most new cars do have a govenor. It's usually set @ about 100 or so though, which still isnt great, but better than 120. And, if your someone who knows anything about cars (which most people who are goign that fast seem to considerign they are usually younger boys racing and such) you can take the governor off.