(This is the sixth in a month-long series of guest blog posts from National Safety Council survivor advocates. We are sharing our stories in honor of National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.) 

Papa believed that we were each other’s keeper, and he took that role to heart. It was evidenced in everything he did. If there was a need, he would fill it, and he would do it without fanfare or discussion.

The life of this good, honorable, decent, God-fearing, community and family man is gone because someone driving an 18-wheeler decided to talk on a phone. Tragically, my aunt witnessed it all.

For my family, distracted driving is so much more than a buzzword. It is what took the most precious man we’ve ever known. No text, e-mail, social media post or telephone call is worth the possibility of ending your own life or another’s. 

(This is the fifth in a month-long series of guest blog posts from National Safety Council survivor advocates. We are sharing our stories in honor of National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.) 

It happened on a Monday, just two days before Christmas. On December 23, 2013, John walked outside to check the mail. The mailbox was at the end of our driveway, no more than 35 feet from the front door. 

He opened the mailbox. As he reached for the mail sitting inside, he was struck and killed by a car driven by a man who was texting.

Walking to your mailbox should be an everyday, uneventful occurrence. That day it was not.

(This is the fourth in a month-long series of guest blog posts from National Safety Council survivor advocates. We are sharing our stories in honor of National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.) 

Car crashes are the number one killer of teens in America. Over 2,500 teens died in motor vehicle crashes in 2013, and more than 300,000 were involved in crashes that sent them to the emergency room, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 

I myself will be taking to the roads soon as a teen driver, and I don’t find these statistics encouraging.

I’ve also lost a loved one because of a distracted driver. My nana was killed by someone who chose to drive and text.

(This is the third in a month-long series of guest blog posts from National Safety Council survivor advocates. We are sharing our stories in honor of National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.) 
 

Since we were still celebrating Christmas with the family, when Jake's father called we knew it couldn't be good news. Mentally, you cannot grasp the finality of it; physically, your body rejects even the thought of it and it seems to need to purge the very idea. Punching, screaming, crying and finally throwing up, every fiber in my being wanted to rid my body and mind of this horrible event. Yet as I came to, so to speak, looked around and took in the sight of my entire family in hysterics, I knew it was real.

Identifying the body, picking out a casket and what he would wear into eternity, trying to explain to his two little brothers that "KK" isn't coming home, figuring out who would speak at the celebration of his life and probably a hundred other things that I can't remember were shrouded in a dark fog of confusion, fear and pain.

The first year I moved from space to space, sometimes not remembering where I had been for hours at a time. The second year, I woke up and realized it was not just a bad dream; Jake was not coming home for Christmas, that was not his truck that just passed me and I would not be going to the Rangers game to celebrate his birthday but to the cemetery.

(This is the second in a month-long series of guest blog posts from National Safety Council survivor advocates. We are sharing our stories in honor of National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.) 

Hope is the biggest takeaway from spending time with these strong and selfless advocates. How much easier it would be to just stay frozen in grief and pain. To be moved to action, so others won’t have to go through this type of sorrow and loss, brings hope to the human spirit that was damaged by the act of distracted driving. Sharing information to help create change, speaking up at a legislative hearing, meeting with community leaders to encourage company policies for employees not to use devices while driving, all of these things bring hope to this issue. We don’t have to let this trend continue. We hope you will be moved to focus on your drive and not wait until you are directly affected by distracted driving like we were. Remove the distractions from your ride. We are here to tell you, it can happen to you.

(This is the first in a month-long series of blog posts from National Safety Council survivor advocates. We are sharing our stories in honor of National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.)

I’d chosen my sublet on Craig’s List, and it ended up being a fuchsia-colored living-room-turned-bedroom in a garden apartment on a corner in Little India. After I’d met my future landlady, a Filipina flamenco dancer from Las Vegas, and my sometimes roommate, a flamenco dancer from Mexico who liked to clap when making a point, I walked back on the street I’d used to get there, smelling unusual spoiled lychee smells. The rows of yellow-gold necklaces and filigreed chandelier earrings glistened in the store windows as I passed. The ultra-white mannequins in purple and teal saris in a storefront, their whiteness made all the more jarring because of where they stood. And I thought, Now this is an adventure! Or probably something like that.