In this article it states that distracted driving accidents are down to 5,000 or so for Michigan in 2012. The chilling part is that if you add in all of the other types of distractions such as alcohol it is right around 20,000 accidents per year.
From cellphones to iPods, distracted-driving crashes take their toll on victims and their loved ones
Charmaine Daugherty, a Washtenaw County mother of four, was killed after losing control of her car while texting.(MLive.com file photo)
EnlargeNewaygo County
Date: Oct. 12, 2012
Time: 5:46 p.m.
Dale Cruzan, 63, and his wife, Carol, 60, were killed when a 25-year-old driver using his cellphone drove past a stop sign and struck their vehicle broadside, police said The at-fault driver was looking at an app on his phone when he crashed, according authorities.Victims of distracted drivings gallery (10 photos)
Date: Oct. 12, 2012
Time: 5:46 p.m.
Dale Cruzan, 63, and his wife, Carol, 60, were killed when a 25-year-old driver using his cellphone drove past a stop sign and struck their vehicle broadside, police said The at-fault driver was looking at an app on his phone when he crashed, according authorities.Victims of distracted drivings gallery (10 photos)
RELATED: Search this database for distracted-driving crashes near you.
Theirs is a small fraternity, defined by a moment they will never forget, and pain that lingers still.
For Tom Phelps, it is the memory of racing home from out-of-town, his wife by his side. She had told him there was a crash, but not everything. He would not have been able to endure the long ride. She suffered in silence for him.
For Mark Burgett, it is the horror of seeing his daughter in her hospital bed, hoping beyond hope the brain swelling would stop.
And for Jan May, it was “the regular, normal day” that suddenly went very bad.
Each is the victim of a distracted driver, on a cellphone or otherwise. Their loved one was killed, yet they are left to bear the injustice, mourn the loss, struggle to heal.
“How are we doing? Things are going horrible in our life,” says Mark Burgett, of Plymouth, whose 22-year-old daughter died nearly a year ago today. “We’re doing the best we can to cope. There’s no real good reason why she was taken from us by someone who could not pay attention driving their car.”
'He never touched his brakes'
There were more than 5,000 distracted-driving crashes in Michigan in 2012 – those either designated in police crash reports as involving cellphones or other forms of distracted driving. That doesn’t count those involving alcohol, drugs, medication, fatigue or other driver conditions that could be considered distracting. If so, the number would reach nearly 20,000.
The crash that killed Western Michigan University senior Alexandra Burgett in Kalamazoo County was the state’s 1,612th distracted-driving crash last year.
It was a beautiful spring Saturday.
Mark Burgett spent the morning hauling patio fixtures out of winter storage. He went in for lunch, and the phone rang. It was a Kalamazoo police officer.
“He said she’d been in an accident and that we need to come to Kalamazoo,” Burgett recalls. “And he said I could not talk to her because she had a breathing tube down her throat.”
Police say a driver reaching for his wallet drove across the centerline on May 12. The GMC Denali struck one car, then Burgett’s and a third vehicle.
Western Michigan University senior Alexandra Burgett died from injuries suffered in a chain-reaction crash caused by a driver who was reaching for his wallet, police say. He recalls seeing his daughter in the hospital. Head shaven. Part of her skull removed to relieve pressure. Bandages and tubes and so many drugs.
His voice becomes ragged, and he pauses to gather himself. “It was unimaginable seeing all that and trying to figure it all out,” he says finally.
The early prognosis was cautiously hopeful. That changed after several days.
“The pressure in her skull just kept going up and up and up,” he says, pausing again. “That was pretty much it. After that she could not recover. She had too much brain damage and she was gone.”
The Denali’s driver, Kevin Moran, 55, of Mattawan, was charged with committing a moving violation causing death, and received the maximum one-year jail sentence.
Four vehicles were involved in the crash that killed Alexandra Burgett, three seen here. Police say the at-fault driver swerved into oncoming traffic while reaching for a wallet. “I’ve always thought he was either texting or reading an email or doing something with a phone,” he said, conceding police turned up no evidence of active phone use.
“Whatever he was doing, he should have been watching the road. He shouldn’t have been reaching for his damn wallet. He never touched his brakes.”
The long ride home
Tom Phelps, a long-haul trucker, was in Indianapolis on Oct. 22 when he learned there was a crash. His 36-year-old son, Matt, had been struck by a pickup while walking along a road on Oct. 22. The 17-year-old driver was retrieving an iPod that had fallen to the floor.
Matt Phelps “My wife never said a word to me. She looked funny in the face. I thought she was sick. She held it back all that time, knowing I’d never be able to drive,” Tom Phelps recalls.
“When I got home, everybody was gathered in our shop, Pearl’s Pizza Palace. Our pastor and all of our family was there, and they announced it to me then.”
In a small town, people know each other. About a month ago, the couple ran into the mother of the teen at a local diner.
“My wife knew the mother real well for years,” Tom Phelps says. “Pearl was talking to the mother. I sat down and ate my breakfast. She was kind of looking at Pearl. I think she just didn’t really want to look at me too much. She probably felt so bad.
“She asked how I was, and said she was sorry that it happened, the sort of things you say to someone who has lost a son.”
He is speaking on the phone using a headset, having pulled his rig to an Iowa roadside. Federal law prevents interstate truckers from using hand-held phones.
Two deaths and a community in grief
Dale and Carol Cruzan were killed when police say their car was struck by a vehicle driven by a 25-year-old checking an app on his phone. That’s when the driver will appear in court, accused in the deaths of Dale and Carol Cruzan of White Cloud. May says the family has been told the 25-year-old was checking an app on his phone when he drove past a stop sign and his car collided with the Cruzans’.
“It was just a regular, normal day,” May recalls of that late-Friday afternoon on Oct. 12. “I came from work, got on my computer, was watching TV, and got a call from my other brother. He just told me that Dale and Carol had gotten into an accident. And that they were killed. … It was the worst phone call I can ever imagine.
“Now that the court case is coming, it’s going to start things in motion again, all our emotions.”
Dale, 63, and Carol, 60, were well known in the Newaygo County community, active in the schools and at church. He was a deacon and she was a deaconess at White Cloud Seventh Day Baptist Church.
She recalls feeling shocked the other driver was distracted by his cellphone. But she does not feel anger. There is only loss.
“I was brought up that you have to forgive people for their actions. It was sadness for him as well as my people,” May says.
“I just want to let you know Dale and Carol were both part of the community, and the whole community was mourning. They both were active in the school and the White Cloud teen center and it was wonderful people that had to go.”
Michigan police records indicate cell-phone involved crashes are on the decline. What do you think?
Unanswered questions
A sadness lingers for Scott Pettengill. He has wondered many times what he might have done differently to avoid the crash that killed a 35-year-old Chesaning man on May 16.
“I struggle with that a lot, because of what happened, if I could have done this and I could have done that,” says Pettengill, 58, of Frankenmuth.
Police said a Saturn Vue driven by the Chesaning man drove into the path of Pettengill’s car at M-15 and German Road. “He just came across in a flash of silver. That’s the color of his car. I didn’t even have time to hit my brakes. It was over in a moment.”
The police crash report says the other driver was using a cellphone. Pettengill did not know that.
It may not be true. A separate police narrative makes no mention of a cellphone. It’s possible the crash report is mistaken – as simple as checking the wrong box.
But it lightens Pettengill’s burden.
“It maybe would have helped me recover a little bit,” he says. “Just to understand, maybe there was something else going on that I didn’t have the opportunity to stop … something that could ease my mind.”
-- Email statewide projects coordinator John Barnes at jbarnes1@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter.
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