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TwitThisThe Hidden Hazards
On a November morning in 1998, Alan Pakula climbed into his Volvo station wagon and began the 100-mile drive from Manhattan to his Long Island house. The acclaimed movie director (Sophie's Choice, All the President's Men) had made the trip countless times without incident.As the 70-year-old Pakula neared exit 49 on the Long Island Expressway just before noon, a vehicle ahead of him drove over a seven-foot steel rod in the road, kicking it into the air. Within seconds, the rod shot through Pakula's windshield, smashing into his forehead and killing him almost instantly. Authorities never determined where the rod, the kind used to secure a tractor-trailer's load, came from.
News reports called it a "freak" accident, which puts it in the same category as other tragedies to make headlines in recent years: a 22-year-old New Jersey woman was left with a body's worth of broken bones after swerving to dodge a deer; a 24-year-old Washington woman needed major reconstructive surgery after a wall unit fell off a truck and smashed into her face; a young couple were killed by a falling tree that crushed their SUV on a suburban New York parkway.
Though the details of each are unique, these accidents share a common, unsettling theme: the way hidden hazards on, in, and around our roads claim innocent lives.
It is estimated that there are at least 1.6 million car accidents a year involving trees, animals and vehicle debris. A Reader's Digest analysis of government data found that in 2003, such crashes caused over 600 deaths. Even scarier: These accidents are increasing. From 1999 to 2003, deaths tied to vehicle debris jumped 43 percent, from 298 a year to 427. Animal-car deaths rose 38 percent, from 152 to 210.
That's just part of the story. With out-of-the-blue crashes just a sliver of the 6.3 million accidents, 2.9 million injuries and 42,600 road deaths, they get scant notice compared to, say, drunk driving. That means the root causes go ignored.
That's starting to change -- good news to people like Greg Cohen, executive director of the nonprofit Roadway Safety Foundation. Looking beyond these accidents' freak nature, he says, can bring down the death toll.
After all, he says, "Conscientious drivers can only do so much."
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