Soon we’ll be on our way to Washington DC again. Many of you know that I volunteer with the Truck Safety Coalition, a nonprofit group that works to make changes in regulations and rules governing commercial trucks in an effort to make the roads safer for all of us. And you know that I do this because my dad was killed by a sleepy semi driver back in December of 2004.

Eleven years ago my family’s life was changed forever. It seems like a hundred years. It seems like yesterday. And for four days every other year we are immersed in it, totally focused on the issues and the emotions. We will join other families next weekend, other scarred, hurting families, other people that want their loss to mean something. You can read about our last conference in 2013 at my blog posts here, here and, if you read only one, especially here.

During our time together we are safe to express our continued grief regardless of how many years have passed. And we are able to provide support to the new families who have unwillingly joined our painful club. It’s a long, hard road we’re all on, a complicated argument, a difficult fight that we face. The odds of a group of ordinary citizens making inroads in a system influenced by campaign contributions by the American Trucking Association are low. But we’re a noisy group.

And we aren’t going to quit.

Because the people whose lives were lost, and those whose lives were forever changed, deserve to be heard. We are the voice for those that can no longer speak and we make sure they are not forgotten. In their honor we work to keep everyone safer, those of us on the road as well as the drivers of the commercial trucks.

Stay tuned.