Tag Archives: children

Lindsey Schmidt, 29 and Pregnant, and 3 Sons Killed in Beecher, IL Crash

August 2, 2017 Mike

Who

Lindsey Schmidt, 29 and 4 months pregnant, Owen Schmidt, 6, Weston Schmidt, 4, Kaleb Schmidt, 21 months were killed in a collision while driving in a green 2014 Subaru Outback.

The collision occurred with a 25-year old man from Maneno driving a grey 2002 Chevrolet S10. The man survived. The collision occurred around 8:30 AM on Monday, July 24th, 2017 at the intersection of Yates Avenue and Corning Road in Beecher, Illinois (Will County, Washington Township). Lindsey and Kaleb died at the scene; Weston died Tuesday evening at 5:55 PM and Owen died at 2:39 AM Thursday. The children are survived by their father, Lindsey’s husband.

How

Per reports from the Chicago Tribune and ABC 7 Chicago, Lindsey was driving her boys to VBS (vacation bible camp) at Trinity Lutheran Church when the crash occurred a block from their home in Beecher, Illinois. They were northbound on Yates Avenue and were struck on the driver’s side by the male driver, who was traveling east on Corning Road and did not yield at the stop sign.

Police estimate the crash occurred at 55 mph per the sole survivor of the collision, who stated that his cruise control was set at that speed. The collision forced both vehicles off the road into a nearby field. The pickup driver was taken to St. James Hospital and later to Christ Medical Center where he was described as in stable condition; he underwent minor surgery due to a large arm laceration.

Lindsey and Kaleb were pronounced dead at the scene. Kaleb’s brothers were transported to St. Margaret Hospital in Indiana and later airlifted to Chicago. Weston was pronounced dead in Comer Children’s Hospital in Chicago at 5:55 PM on Tuesday; he had been placed on life support the previous day. His older brother Owen was placed in a medical coma and passed away two days later at 2:39 AM Thursday.

Per a minister at the church, Lindsey had lost a brother to a car crash in the same town 12 years ago. The pickup driver was initially cited for not yielding to a stop sign, but the charges were dropped to avoid double jeopardy complications while investigations probed the possibilities of more serious infractions (e.g., chemical inebriation or phone use). He was described as cooperative with the authorities, and said he had been on his way to work and did not know the area.

Why

This is another in an endless line of tragedies in our butcher-worthy road network. Reviewing the facts as presented, it seems clear that the man driving the S10 was responsible for the collision. We don’t yet know how he was distracted (e.g., a phone, drugs, alcohol, fatigue, daydreaming…), but we can analyze the crash and the larger ramifications of the tragedy.

The Outback

The ’14 Outback is one of the safest cars on the road, and one of the best vehicles you could ask to be in before an imminent side impact. It received a “good” score overall and in all subcategories in the IIHS side impact test as well as a 5 star NHTSA side score. The side impact intrusion resistance ranged between 15 and 17.5 cm, which is one of the best side impact scores you can get in a station wagon even in 2017. It was a good vehicle.

With that said, the Outback was designed to handle 143.7KJ of kinetic energy in a side impact collision safely. In my experience calculating forces, individuals tend to survive up to 200% of designed force tolerances in their vehicles. Above that, however, survival odds drop significantly; I’d estimate the survival rate at 300% of expected forces drops to somewhere around 33%. Around how many KJ of energy did the S10 transfer?

The 2002 S10 weighs 3,016-4,039 lbs, depending on the trim level. It comes with a “marginal” frontal score. Estimating the weight as 3,500 lbs and given the likely speeds of the collision (let’s use the provided estimate of 55 mph), the collision likely imparted at least 480KJ of energy into the Outback / S10. The standard side impact test simulates 143KJ of energy (a 3300-lb sled impacting a vehicle at 31 mph). In other words, the Outback faced 336% of the force it would have experienced in the types of crashes cars are rated to make survivable. Given these forces, it is sadly understandable that the occupants of the Outback succumbed to their injuries, even with the use of seat belts and car seats.

The S10 driver’s survival was expected, in contrast, as he experienced a frontal impact that featured survivable forces. Despite the marginal frontal score, the S10 would have been expected to perform reasonably safely in a 254KJ collision, which means its occupant experienced 188% of tested forces. His survival was almost guaranteed as a result.

Vision Zero

Looking at the collision through the lens of personal responsibility, it’s easy to start and stop with blame centered squarely on the S10’s driver. However, we’re never going to improve our road safety figures significantly as long as we continue to rely on people to behave safely with a minimum of external influences. Best practices–i.e., Vision Zero principles–stipulate that a road like that on which the Schmidts tragically lost their lives and which turned Lindsey’s husband into a widower and robbed him of four of his children should never have existed.

Specifically, VZ principles forbid speed limits above 50 kph (31mph) at intersections where the potential for side impacts exist. To put it another way, if that intersection had been designed in accordance with best practices, every member of both vehicles should have survived, because the Outback was designed to protect occupants–to the degree to which they’d have been able to leave the vehicle with zero to minimal injury–in a 31 mph crash. That’s what it means to have a “good” IIHS or NHTSA side impact score. It’s no coincidence that this is where VZ sets the speed limit for such intersections.

A 55 mph intersection throws 3.14x as much energy into a side collision as a 31 mph intersection. That means 314% as much force as any well-designed vehicle is designed to handle. Time and time again, reviewing crashes has suggested that survivability odds drop dramatically once forces surpass 200%, or 2x of designed limits.

A large factor in why many European countries are experiencing glorious decreases in car deaths year after year is because they’re putting these kinds of principles into place. The longer we continue to beat the bloody drum of “personal responsibility” and “paying attention”, the longer we’ll ring the church bells for needless tragedies. T-bone intersections become death traps above PSLs of 30 mph. Undivided highways become bloodbaths above PSLs of 43 mph. Any road with a PSL above 20 mph becomes a gauntlet for pedestrians. These principles aren’t going to change with more air bags and crumple zones. We either engineer drivers out of the equation (through transportation alternatives and self-driving vehicles) or we engineer the roads to be safer; ideally, we do both. But as long as people aren’t taking the bus, riding bicycles, and reclining in self-driving vehicles, the most effective approach to increase the safety of our road network is to equip it with speed limits that respect the boundaries of human crash tolerances.

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Jacob Griffith, 36, Son Wyatt, 6, Killed in West Des Moines, IA Crash

April 1, 2017 Mike

Who

Jacob Griffith, 36, from Urbandale, Iowa, and his son, Wyatt, 6, died at around 7:53 PM Wednesday night, December 21st, 2016, in West Des Moines, Iowa in a collision with a support pillar beneath the 50th Street overpass on I-235.

Griffith’s daughter survived the collision with life-threatening injuries, was taken to blank Children’s Hospital, and was most recently described as in critical condition.

The vehicle was a white large pickup truck that appears to be a mid-to-late 2000-era Ford F-150 quad cab.

How

The exact details of the collision are as yet unknown, but Griffith appears to have been heading eastbound on I-235 with his children in the back seats of the pickup truck. He then crashed into a concrete support pillar at a high rate of speed, although it is not yet clear whether or not he had been speeding. Both Griffith and his son died at the scene. Witnesses at the scene broke the rear windows of the crashed truck to extricate the two children from the rear seats, and Griffith’s daughter was transported to the hospital. Witnesses described the crash as severe.

“It was just surrounded by police and I saw a guy pulling, wiping blood off his hands and everything else” said Cole Ledbetter.

Ledbetter said he knew the instant he saw the crash that it was as bad as it looked.

“I told my girlfriend, ‘that one doesn’t look good’ and as soon as we saw the front end of the truck I turned to her and said ‘somebody didn’t make it in that’” he said.

Why

On the surface, this appears to have been a tragic case of poor driving that claimed the life of a father and one of his children while severely injuring another. Investigators haven’t provided any information regarding why Griffith left the road and drove into the support pillar, but such cases are almost always due to driver error; there are very few mechanical issues in vehicles that lead to fatalities in comparison to human mistakes.

Poor Infrastructure

One of the most significant elements of the collision involved the poorly designed concrete support pillars of the concrete underpass. As visible in this image, there were no barriers around the support pillars capable of preventing a vehicle from driving directly into them. This reflects the dominant approach to road safety found today in the US, wherein individual drivers are responsible for their safety. While this sounds like a common-sense approach, it’s not best practices, and it’s not what the countries with the lowest death rates (those following Vision Zero policies) are doing. A simple barricade running parallel to the road and tapering around the concrete pillars could have either prevented vehicles from crashing directly into the barriers or at the very least ameliorated any potential collisions, saving the lives of father and child in this collision.

Restraint Use

I was also unable to find much additional information regarding the speed of the vehicle upon impact or if and how the children were harnessed. There are certainly crash speeds that make collisions unsurvivable for all occupants in a given vehicle, but given the fact that the daughter did survive the collision, it was certainly survivable at some level. I did find what appeared to be a Graco black low back booster thrown from the vehicle (next to a child’s shoe) in an on-site image, suggesting at least one of the children was boostered. However, boosters aren’t appropriate restraints for children before the age of 8, and neither child was 8 years old. The image additionally shows severe intrusion in the front cabin and second row, significantly reducing the survival space for all occupants. I would tentatively hypothesize that the deceased child may have been sitting immediately behind his father. This video indicates the daughter was in a car seat (it looks like a Graco combination seat), which likely saved her life.

It’s possible that if the son had been in a harnessed seat, as best practice suggests for children under 8 who are no longer rear-facing, he might have survived the collision. However, it’s impossible to provide any answers without additional information, and that information isn’t forthcoming at the moment. The most pertinent factor in the survival of the children, of course, involved whatever led the father to crash to begin with. Why did he drive into the barrier? What happened in the pickup immediately before the collision? Or was everything normal everywhere but inside Griffith’s head?

Whatever the reason, additional information regarding the history of Griffith also raises questions.

According to court records, Griffith’s wife had filed for an order of protection against him this past August due to threats against her life, against himself, and against police officers. Records then indicate that in September, a new agreement was set in place wherein Griffith could no longer contact his wife but did have temporary custody of his son and daughter. Specifically, he was granted visitation rights on Wednesday evenings between 5 PM and 8 PM. The fatal collision occurred just before 8 PM on a Wednesday. It’s possible that he might have been driving back to the police department to return his children. Was he simply in a hurry to get back within the boundaries of his custody? The fact that his children appear to have been restrained suggests that he had planned on arriving alive.

While there is no way of knowing exactly what was going through Griffith’s mind in the moments before the crash, I have to wonder if his relationship with his wife might have affected his world view or the decisions he made when driving with his children. We may never know. What is certain, sadly, is that his wife has been left without her husband and one of her children, with the other between life and death. I can only wish her and her surviving child the best.

What to do

Tragedies like these leave us with more questions than answers, and more grief than solace. However, because we always look for ways to protect ourselves and our loved ones, no matter how little we can do in the end, there are at least a few things we can take away from this sad, sad day. Please pay attention when driving, whether with or without your children. Remember that you can cut your risk of death by auto in half simply by driving safely, which is a greater boost than that possible by buying the safest cars on the road.

Use the proper restraints for your children every single time you install them in a vehicle. That means rear-facing from birth through preschool years (ideally until 4!), before forward-facing them in harnessed convertible or combination seats (ideally until 8!). Once they outgrow their harnessed seats, it’s best to keep them restrained in high-back boosters until they’re physically and psychologically ready to use adult seat belt systems (which typically happens between 10 and 12). These steps take a bit of work to do and to keep up with, but they can literally mean the difference between life and death.

Above all, we need to continue to look toward new ways of thinking and design our infrastructure in ways that help reduce the risks present in road travel. We can’t control how people think when driving, but we can design roads to have fewer blindingly obvious deathtraps like unguarded concrete pillars mere feet away from 70 mph traffic.

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Eight-month-old Infant Thrown from Crash in Texarkana, AR, Survives

February 7, 2017 Mike

Who

An 8-month-old infant in Texarkana, Arkansas, survived a car crash at approximately 7 PM on Friday, November 25th, close to mile marker 3 in the eastbound lanes of I-30. She was mildly injured with a forehead scratch. Four other occupants were in the vehicle, which appears to be a 6th-gen Nissan Sentra, and none received serious injuries.

The Nissan was clipped by an 18-wheeler, which led to the crash. The driver of the 18-wheeler was cited for unsafe and improper lane changes.

How

Per news reports, the child was thrown from the vehicle during the crash and landed 25 feet away inside a drain in the median of the highway. She was located 3 feet beneath the drainage grate, which itself was covered with hay. Family members had begun to search from the child after the crash and enlisted the help of a Good Samaritan who had arrived on the scene after the collision, as well as first responders who also arrived. The baby was reportedly sitting upright in the drain and waiting for help. She was pulled out through the grate by 3 first responders and apparently had little more than a forehead scratch.

Police later confirmed that the child’s car seat, which first responders located outside the vehicle, had not been installed properly within the vehicle and that the child had additionally not been restrained properly within the vehicle.

Why

This is an unfathomably fortunate ending to what could have easily been a tragedy. I won’t venture to explain how the child escaped unharmed from being thrown from a vehicle and through a grate 25 feet away, and will limit my analysis to the parts of the story that could have been prevented. The circumstances of the initial collision are unclear, but it appears that poor maneuvering by an 18-wheeler led to the first impact. Given the massive weight discrepancies between 18-wheelers (which can weigh up to 80,000 pounds, or 40 tons), and passenger vehicles (which typically weigh between 2,000 and 5,000 pounds, or 1-2.5 tons), it’s no surprise that even a minor error by the driver of the heavy truck led to such large consequences experienced by the occupants of the normally-sized vehicle. This kind of error will unfortunately remain a risk on our roads until we have automated trucks. That day is coming, but we’re not there yet.

However, the factors within the control of the parties involved had to do with the improperly installed car seat and the improperly restrained child within the seat were. These errors, while unfortunate, are also representative of the typical state of children in this country who travel in personal vehicles. I’ve written before about how the majority of car seats in this country aren’t installed properly (typically they’re not installed tightly enough), and how the majority of children in this country aren’t installed properly within their car seats (again, they’re typically not installed tightly enough). This story provided an example of what’s at risk when children aren’t properly restrained, whether within their car seats or within their vehicles.

What to do

Please take the time to make sure your car seats are correctly installed and that your children are safely harnessed within their car seats each time you drive. The safest vehicles on the road won’t do much for your children if they fly out of them in a collision due to not being installed correctly in their seats, or due to their seats not being installed correctly in your vehicles.

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Fern Thedford, 6 months, Dies from Heat Stroke in Melissa, TX

July 1, 2016 Mike

Who

Fern Thedford, 6 months, died on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 21st, 2016, in Melissa, Texas (approximately 40 miles north of Dallas) due to heat stroke. The heat stroke occurred due to her having been forgotten in a 2011-era Honda Odyssey outside the family home.

Michael Shannon Thedford, 33, Fern’s father, was charged with manslaughter due to leaving her in the family vehicle, where she ultimately passed away. He was held on $20,000 bond, which he posted and was released.

How

Per various reports, Thedford, a substitute teacher at Melissa High School, dropped Fern’s siblings, a 5-year old and 3-year old, at a local daycare at around 9 AM before returning home with his infant daughter. Temperatures at the time outside the vehicle were approximately 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Per Thedford, he forgot his daughter in the vehicle due to a change in routine; his daughter had developed a fever the night before and could not attend daycare the following day. He parked in front of the house and went inside for a nap, and did not wake for at least 3 hours. He discovered his daughter was missing, and found her unconscious in the vehicle, describing her as “hot as a brick”. In efforts to lower her temperature, he took her indoors and placed her in the refrigerator for a certain amount of time, and then called 911 (at around 1:30 PM). His wife returned home from work and they attempted to revive their daughter via CPR, but were unsuccessful.

Deputies were called to the home at approximately 1:30 PM and discovered the child as unresponsive. Firefighters and paramedics arrived and left, followed by detectives. Thedford described how he had forgotten his daughter to them with a doll. He was later arrested and charged, and then released after posting bond. Todd Shapiro, Thedford’s attorney, described the father’s behavior as negligent but not reckless, per the law.

The official high that day in North Texas was 98 degrees, making it the hottest day of the year thus far.

Why

The story of children dying after being forgotten in hot vehicles (sometimes termed in the media “forgotten baby syndrome”, and more accurately known as “heat stroke” or “vehicular heat stroke”) is unfortunately a common one in the United States, especially in the warmer months of the year. This tragedy involved a 6 month old girl, Fern Thedforth, who was unfortunately a victim of her father’s forgetfulness.

The facts as laid out in this case seem rather straightforward; Thedforth took all 3 of his kids to daycare, but forgot to bring his youngest in with him upon his return. He stated the change in routine led to his forgetting her, which is entirely possible; he was used to dropping off all 3 children, and simply presumed he had done so by the time he’d arrived home. Six month olds aren’t talking yet, and are prone to falling asleep during car rides; it’s entirely possible she hadn’t made a sound when he left her inside, and once he’d left the vehicle (which was parked outdoors) and entered his home, his odds of hearing her would have been reduced to zero. Unfortunately, he also chose to take a nap at the time, and essentially sealed her fate.

Fridge?

His decision to attempt to place her in the fridge upon discovering her in the van may have seemed foolish, but in a moment of panic, was understandable. In situations involving heat stroke and hypothermia, the priority is to lower the body’s temperature to safe levels as quickly as safely possible; immersion in cold water, ice baths, and ice packs are standard recommendations. Would it have been been better to have called 911 first? Absolutely. However, without having direct access to the medical records present, it’s impossible to know how close to death Fern was by the time she had been retrieved from the vehicle; there comes a point (i.e., organ failure) where the effects of heat stroke can no longer be reversed.

Context

This sad scenario occurs far too often in the US. Noheatstroke counts Fern’s death as the 16th child vehicular heat stroke fatality of 2016 so far, and there were 24 in total in 2015. On average, since 1998, there have been 37 deaths per year, with 2010 being the “worst” year at 49 deaths, and 2015 being the best. Each death is too many.

A number of factors in Fern’s death are echoed in the statistics of these tragedies in the US. She was forgotten by her caregiver, which has been the case in 54% of deaths in the last 18 years. Over half of child vehicular heat stroke deaths involved children younger than 2, and 32%, or one out of every 3 deaths, involved children younger than 1, which was also the case here. Of the 16 deaths so far this year, 3 have occurred in Texas, more than in any state besides Louisiana, which has also seen 3 deaths.

Prevention

Every one of these tragedies are preventable. As a parent, the most important priority has to be the child. Things Thedford could have done to have prevented forgetting Fern involve making a point to check each of the car seats before leaving the vehicle, or texting a picture of Fern to his wife after getting home. Having a planned activity involving his daughter for the day, since he knew she would not be attending daycare, could also have kept her alive.

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Norway: Where (Almost) No Children Die in Car Crashes

December 21, 2015 Mike

With all the time I spend talking about car safety, car seats, and children’s welfare on this blog, it’s heartening to read a bit of good news now and then around the Internet. In the US, we’re still fighting to make extended-rear facing a thing, and not just an odd thing overprotective parents do.

We’re up to 3 states that require it until age 2, but it’s still only required until 1 in the remaining 47. Meanwhile, the Swedes have known for years that all children should remain rear-facing at least until the age of 4, which is why I sound like a broken record recommending the Fllo, the Foonf, the Rainier, and the Pacifica, since these are the best seats for keeping children rear-facing until 4 or more currently available in the United States.

It’s a lot of work trying to spread best practices, especially since most parents are still forward-facing somewhere between 1 and 2.

Norway - The Car Crash Detective — It’s where Elsa would go. It’s also a safer place for children in cars than the United States.

However, in Norway, things are different. They’ve got their issues (racism, xenophobia, and a lot of cold weather), but they’ve listened to Sweden, and the nation that served as the outdoor and thematic inspiration for Frozen (yes, really) is on the verge of going an entire year without losing a single child under 10 to a car crash.

That’s right. Not a single child fatality (under 10) has been recorded so far this year in Norway.

What would that look like in the US?

Norway child traffic deaths much better than US car crash fatalities

Well, let’s look at the most recent year for which complete data is available: 2013. In 2013, per the IIHS, 939 children under 13 died in motor vehicle crashes, which included passenger vehicle occupants, pedestrians, bicyclists, and ATV riders. Of those 939 children, 60 were under 1, 245 were 1-3, 368 were 4-8, and 266 were between 9 and 12. For a fairer comparison, let’s just look at the children who passed away between 0 and 8. That adds up to 673 children.

We can’t really compare that to Norway since they haven’t lost any children. However, we *can* compare the proportions. There were 316.5 million people in the US in 2013, vs 5.166 million in Norway today. To put it another way, there are 61.3 Americans for every Norwegian. Dividing 673, by 61.3, then, would give us the number of children under 9 we’d expect to die annually in car crashes in Norway: 11.

Instead, zero have died.

That’s pretty impressive. Scratch that. That’s wonderful! Let’s read about the details from The Local, a Norwegian English-language paper, and get some historical context:

“In 1970, nearly 100 hundred children died on Norwegian roadways, and many were seriously injured.

Okay, so Norway went from just about 100 child deaths in 1970 to zero in 2015. In 1970, there were 3.876 million Norwegians. In the US, it’s hard to find 1970 child traffic death data, but in 1975, 1036 children under 9 died in traffic deaths in the US, and our population then was 205.1 million. To put it another way, back then, there were 52.9 Americans for every Norwegian, which means we’d expect 53x as many US child deaths as Norwegian deaths. However, dividing 1036 by 100 shows only 10x as many child deaths.

To put it simply, it was actually 5 times *safer* to be a child, traffic wise, in the US in 1975, than it was in Norway in 1970. What in the world could have changed so much to make it much safer to be a child in Norway today than a child in the US in the last 30-35 years? Let’s turn to the director of the Norwegian Council for Road Safety (Trygg Trafikk, or TT), for a response:

Extended rear-facing in Norway credited with zero kids dying in car crashes

We can see that seatbelts, car seats, lower speeds, safer cars, better roads and more knowledge saves lives,” TT director Jan Johansen said in a press release. The council said that Norwegian parents have gotten much better at ensuring that their kids are buckled up in the back seat and in keeping children in rear-facing car seats until the age of four.

There you have it: per the director, Norwegian parents have caught on to the need to keep children restrained in the back seat–but not just restrained; restrained in rear-facing seats, and until the age of 4. It’s what the Swedes do, and it’s why they have the lowest rates of child car deaths in the world. And it looks like Norway’s getting the same results by following best practices.

Norway’s introduction of mandatory child vehicle restraint systems received much of the credit for the drastic cut in child deaths, and TT said that more pedestrian and cycle paths, plus the increased use of bike helmets, have also contributed to better traffic mortality figures.

For sure, other factors come into play, including the addition of segregated (dedicated) paths for pedestrians and cyclists, who inherently suffer when we prioritize auto transportation over human transportation. They also credit bike helmets, which makes complete sense when you consider how many cycle deaths occur due to head trauma. But the lion’s share of the credit goes to the use of child vehicle restraint systems that are becoming ubiquitous in Norway.

If they can get their child deaths down to zero after once having a rate 5 times as high as that in the United States, there’s no reason why we can’t. But it starts with rear-facing, and we need to keep rear-facing our kids as long as we can. It makes more of a difference than the kind of car you drive, even though safer cars assuredly help.

But what about when it comes to adults? Has the dramatic increase in child safety been an isolated phenomenon, or could it be reflective of greater trends in Norway, and a more encompassing view of community needs to create safe roadways for everyone?

I’m dying to find out, and I think I have the answer.

We’ll take a look at how much safer it is to be a Norwegian driver than an American one very soon. In the mean time, drive safely and remember to safely restrain your children for as long as possible: rear-facing at least until 4 if you can, forward-facing until 8 if possible, and boostering until 10 to 12, depending on how long it takes them to pass the 5-step test.

It takes a bit more time to do these things than to just pop your kids into a seat belt, but the difference can be between around 700 deaths a year, as in the US, or close to zero, as in Norway. I know which camp I’d rather have my kids fall in.

If you want the seats that will help you rear-face the longest, go with the Fllo, the Foonf, the Rainier, and the Pacifica. They’ll let you RF to 50 pounds, which will get most kids to 5 or beyond.

If you want ERF for under $200, the Size4Me, Fit4Me, Head Wise, and Contender will get you to 40 pounds, which will get most kids to 4.

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