Preventable Injury and Deaths - Who Cares?

When it comes to driving around with big pieces of ice on their vehicles it seems many could care less about the damage, injury, and death they are about to cause.

While one might argue it is tough to remove ice from a vehicle, it is even tougher to bring the dead back to life or the injured through to recovery.

Our state legislators need to change the law (which requires serious injury or death in order to issue a citation).

I was on the highways a lot this week, about eight hours altogether to New York City on Tuesday and Philadelphia on Wednesday. I couldn't believe how many cars, minivans, pick-ups, and commercial trucks sped along and let loose chunks of ice as they went.

Yesterday, on 22 eastbound near the LV Mall a minivan changed lanes and hit a bump doing so sending two good sized pieces of ice into the air. I braked and it hit the road safely infront of me. I'm pretty certain the other piece hit the windshield of a van/bus that transported handicapped people that was driving ahead of me in the right lane.

The worst I saw was on 476 south of mid-county when a tractor trailer behind me took a bend in the road at a good speed and in one moment unloaded all the ice from the top of the truck into the lane to its left. Fortunately, no vehicle was there to be showered with debris.

Today, I read in the Morning Call about a truck that sent a piece of ice through the windshield of an ambulance (read the article here), but since the two people weren't seriously injured enough, police filed no charges. In the incidents the Call reported none of the ice flinging vehicles ever bothered to stop. I'm quite certain it was because they didn't care and didn't know.

If you chose to drive with ice on your vehicle, ask yourself if you'd like to get hit by the same. If the answer is no - please do us all a favor and remove it.