Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: Washington DC


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The story continues

Some of you know I was in Washington DC last week, but do you know why? Long term readers might remember the story of my dad who was killed December 23rd of 2004 while slowed in traffic when he was hit from behind by a semi driven by a sleepy driver. I and other members of my family have been working on truck safety issues ever since.

Looking for change from our political leaders.

Last weekend the Truck Safety Coalition held our biannual Sorrow to Strength conference, where survivors and families of victims from across the country met, provided emotional support to each other, and became educated on the issues.

Saturday and Sunday we spent listening to each other and preparing for the meetings to come.

Working the halls of Congress.

Monday and Tuesday we spread out in small groups across Capitol Hill, talking to staff and members of Congress about what happened to us, and the solutions we want implemented in order to save lives.

It is hard but necessary work.

Some of us gathering before our first meetings.

Almost 5,600 people died in commercial truck crashes in 2021. That’s a 13% increase in fatalities over 2020. And over 146,000 people are injured every single year.

Obviously there is much work still to be done. To bring it down to a more human scale, let me tell you the stories of two women, each bearing the unimaginable consequences of the trucking industry’s drive for profits.

Sometimes the sheer size of government can make a person feel unimportant.

Alexandra is a young woman married only two years when she and her husband moved from Idaho to Atlanta where she planned to attend law school. Last November her husband was sitting at a red light when his vehicle was hit from behind by a semi. He is now paralyzed from the neck down and unable to do anything for himself. Alexandra and her mother-in-law have been taking turns sitting with him and advocating for his care in several hospitals and rehab facilities.

But our stories ARE important. My sister and me before her meeting.

She’s a strong woman, Alexandra. She talks about the crash, about the care she provides for her husband, about their impending move back to Idaho to be closer to family. But when she talks about fighting with insurance carriers and the almost $5 million in medical debts she and her husband now owe, she begins to cry.

We have to tell the world.

The minimum amount of liability insurance a carrier has to have is $750,000. That was set in 1980 and has never been increased over the more than 40 years since. Though there’s probably no amount of required insurance that would cover all of the medical costs for Alexandra and her husband, certainly they deserve to have their expenses covered. He deserves to get the best care and therapy available, and he won’t get that if they are on Medicaid.

He was sitting at a red light.

We all sit at red lights.

It’s OUR government, intended to work for all of us.

And then there’s Elise. Her four children were visiting their father in another state, driving to a relative’s house to enjoy summer fun in a backyard pool on a hot July day in 2020. Their dad slowed down entering a construction zone. The semi behind was driven by a man who was high on meth and fentanyl. He hit the family’s car going over 70 mph. It was pushed into the semi in front of them and then into the guard rail where it burst into flame. The children’s dad was pulled out of the car, badly burned. But no one could see the four children in the smoke and flames.

All four of Elise’s children died in that crash.

When I reflect on my life Dad’s death was pivotal.

Elise told her story over and over during our two days on the Hill. She calls herself a mother with no children. I witnessed her dissolve into tears, then take a deep breath and continue on to ask for automatic emergency brakes on all trucks. She does this, with courage, in memory of her children. The least we can do to listen.

More families, more grief, more sharing, more requests for change.

Starting the rule making process for automatic emergency brakes on trucks was part of the last infrastructure bill, but only for the biggest trucks, class 7 and 8. Smaller commercial trucks were not included, and we all know those trucks are buzzing around our neighborhoods every day.

Elise’s children were slowed in a construction zone. We all slow down in construction zones.

It takes a lot of walking, a lot of talking, a lot of LISTENING to make change.

We can listen to these stories and hundreds, thousands of similar stories and send positive thoughts and prayers. That’s nice. But what these two women really want is change. It’s what all of us attending the conference want, change, so that fewer people die and get injured in preventable commercial truck crashes.

But change is hard.

There are bills in the House and Senate ( For example, HR 2687 for raising insurance minimums, HR 1622/S 605 for underride protection on trucks) to make change revolving around several of our issues. But this session of Congress is wrapping up and in the new year we will have to start asking for bills to be reintroduced.

You can help by calling your Senator or House Representative when things heat up again. And you can count on me to let you know all about it.

Some members of Congress are listening. This is Rep. Bustos from Illinois.

Dad’s, and all these stories continue, forever in our hearts.

Miss you, dad. Watch over us as we push forward, OK?


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Flight 93

We detoured, yesterday, from our drive to Washington DC, in order to visit the Flight 93 Memorial.

I recommend visiting in the late afternoon when the light is warm.

We had two phones, the car’s navigational system and a Garmin with us. Each provide different instructions. We ended up circling up and down and around the hills in which the memorial sits. It’s beautiful country but after about an hour of driving, always within 5 minutes of our destination, we were pretty frustrated.

Our first look at the Tower of Voices

Part of the problem is that there’s an old entrance that isn’t open anymore and some of our technical tools wanted to go there…and so we did. The other part of the problem is a distinct lack of signage for the new entrance.

Located on a small hill planted in wildflowers.

But eventually we made it, as the sun was starting to lower in a sky filled with big puffy grey and white clouds.

Eight columns holding the heavy chimes.

Our first stop was windchimes tower, dedicated to the 40 people on the plane that died September 11th, 2001 when the passengers put Flight 93 into the ground rather than allow themselves to be weapons aimed for the US Capitol.

There are 40 different wind chimes, each with a distinct sound.

The chimes are beautiful, but only play when the wind is at least 12 mph, and though it was getting breezy it wasn’t windy enough to hear more than one low tone.

Once in awhile there was a gust of wind.

Then we went on to the visitor center which is built into a huge concrete structure that draws you along that last flight path, and deposits you on a platform overlooking the final crash site of the plane.

Mapping the path of the plane.

It’s a beautiful field now, filled with wildflowers and birds. In the late afternoon light it glows.

The white is a tent left up after this week’s anniversary. The farm over on the hillside witnessed the crash.

We drove down to the lower area, and walked the pathway back to the wall of names. Along the way were some mementos in a space designed to collect them.

Lots of memories left on the wall.

The names etched into the wall were heartbreaking, as were the pictures there, and the flowers.

Always together, forever

We were visiting only three days after the 21st anniversary of the attack, so the flowers were freshly poignant.

We spent a long time wandering the grounds. It was so peaceful with hardly anyone else there.

Yet I couldn’t help but look back up at the visitor center, built along the flight path and imagine what it must have been like that day. What it sounded like, what it smelled like. What it looked like.

Also together forever.

There are photos, of course, of the aftermath. But I don’t think they convey the total horror that must have confronted the emergency workers when they arrived.

Hard to imagine this place as it must have been that day.

I imagine the field was a beautiful place before the plane dropped out of the sky.

Paying her respects.

And it’s a beautiful place again, a fitting tribute to the forty heroes of Flight 93.

Evening light comforts as another day slips away.

After I wrote this a friend provided a link to Sunday Morning’s piece on the Flight 93 National Memorial. It’s a short piece that will explain more about the tower and the site.


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Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Outside ways to move up or down

I had planned, today, to head out with my camera into some rural area and see what there was to see. But it’s raining and the sky is dead grey.

I am not inspired.

Wandering through my emails I found this week’s black and white photo challenge from Cee. Outside ways to move up or down.

Hmmmm…I think about looking for parking garages with outside ramps, freeway ramps, the stairs at a local park. I look at the grey drippy light outside.

I am still not inspired.

Heading up to visit the National Police Memorial one evening.

And then I remember being in DC a couple months ago and all those moving stairs to and from the metro. Definitely a way to move up and down, and pretty stunning in black and white.

If you have better weather head on out and see what you can find for Cee’s challenge. You can link to her post (see my link above) and we’ll all enjoy seeing what you saw.

Another cool stairway..but it’s inside so it doesn’t count.


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What made me smile this week?

Well, the week was spent mostly in DC and was very busy and full of stress. But once the work was done on Tuesday I had plenty of things to smile about.

I love Union Station.

I didn’t take my camera with me, so all the images I post today were taken with my phone. I had fun with the phone, you can take pictures of people easily because no one notices you messing with a phone.

Everyone going to work.

And someday I’d like to do a whole series about people on the Metro. I suppose there’s something less then honest about taking pictures of people without them knowing it.

Different generations travel together.

But I captured the images I did because the people caught my attention, both because of their diversity and because they were interesting. I love people watching on the metro. I’m hardly ever really on my phone there, I’m usually watching and sometimes snapping a shot.

Another thing I love about DC is walking at night. The monuments are, of course, beautiful, but we didn’t visit them this trip. We did, however, see other beautiful things.

Coming up out of the Metro at Judiciary Square. I love the lines.

A lot of the buildings are lit up and glow against the sky.

It shines more at night then during the day.

And the play at Ford Theatre was so good. It held my attention even though we were sitting so close to the box where Lincoln was shot. That usually distracts me, but not during this play.

The night time set contrasts against the lit box where the President was shot.

It was called “Silent Sky” and was about a woman in 1900 who mapped stars but couldn’t take credit for her work which eventually was used in the Hubble Spacecraft.

And still more I love about DC – the Metro. I know the locals don’t like it.

Late in the evening, not many people riding but I like that lone person on the escalator across the way.

There are lots of breakdowns and while we were there it was raining and there was more than one leak in the ceiling. Still….it got us where we wanted to go efficiently and quickly. And did I mention the people watching?

In fact, people watching is good all over the city, even in the museums.

Sitting next to her quiet friend.

No matter where you look there’s something fun to capture.

When I first saw this both guards were leaning on their side of the wall and I thought, for a moment, it was a mirror.

And the museums themselves are pretty awesome, and free.

Inside the castle visitor center for the Smithsonian museums.

It’s a wonderful city, Washington DC, if you can ignore the lack of production happening there.

There are great lines in the architecture everywhere.

Everything that is not political made me smile this week. I hope it made you smile too!

And the food is good too!


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Three cities in one week has to be a record

We’ve been away – yes again. In the space of one week we were busy in Baltimore, MD, Washington DC, and St. Louis, MO. Not long enough at any of them, but all together too long to be away so soon after getting home from our Canadian adventure.

Katie says no more trips until she gets to do something fun.

Winging our way to Baltimore on Southwest very early Monday morning.

I didn’t take my laptop or my camera, and most of the time that was fine. We were too busy to do much in the evenings anyway, except collapse and try to rest up for the next day. But there were probably five or ten or a thousand times during the week that I wished I had my big camera with me.

Oh well, the photos in this blog were all taken with my phone which does an OK job, and in some situations even a better job, than the big camera would have.

Baltimore street in evening light.

So let me catch you up on our travels!

We flew last Monday into Baltimore where we stayed with a friend who, along with a journalist, has written a book about the horrendous experience of losing his wife in a truck crash. His two sons, also with her in the car, were injured, one of them permanently.

A little corner of the library caught my eye.

The book release was last Tuesday and we attended the author event at a huge, beautiful public library in downtown Baltimore. It was fun and we enjoyed supporting our truck safety family member Ed as he spreads the word about unsafe trucks and the extraordinary costs regular families pay so that goods can get to all of us faster and cheaper. And why that has to change.

The next morning we took a train from Baltimore to Washington DC, were we spent the next three days in meetings, educating our lawmakers about four bills we’re supporting.

The DC public transportation system is amazing. Locals there don’t appreciate it as much as those of us who only visit.

It’s a different sort of feeling being proactive rather than reactive. For once we’re asking for support on safety related bills instead of protesting unsafe trucking provisions attached to pending legislation.

One evening we spent the golden hours up near the Capital…

The sun sets on another day of work trying to make our roads safer for everyone.

…and noticed the sun shining off of the Supreme Court building. They were letting people climb the court’s steps, not something that’s always allowed. So of course we ventured up too.

Sitting on the steps of justice.

And just as we were moving on, heading to the train station for our trip back to our hotel, the sun made the building glow.

Like a painting.

Evening back at the hotel was nice too. Our view of the Rosslyn area was stunning, though I was usually too tired to appreciate it.

The phone camera does night shots really well.

Another evening we went to see a baseball game.

Going to the game.

It’s the end of the season, and the local Washington Nationals have already clinched their playoff spot. But the crowd was still excited to be there.

Getting the fans excited.

And as the sun set and the sky went dark the game began. It was perfect out at the ball park, balmy weather, a bit of a breeze…

Play ball!

…and the Nationals won!

It was a good game, lots of scoring, lots of organ music and lots of people watching.

After the game we dawdled on our way back to the hotel, waiting for the crowds on the Metro to thin out. We sat by a fountain at the DOT and watched the water change colors and height.

Blue and pink and green and red lights made this a fun fountain to watch.

Lots of people stood among the trailing water. I just took pictures. No sense heading back to the hotel with wet shoes. Or worse.

Soon our time in DC ended. Saturday morning we headed back to the airport to fly to St. Louis.

Southwest flies out of an older, sort of retro part of National airport. This is the center post and I thought it was cool.

Why St. Louise you ask? Well, this has gotten long enough so I guess you’ll have to wait and see. Plus we pick up you know who tomorrow morning so I need to get my sleep tonight. She’s going to be in a fine fit and I’ll be occupied for some time trying to placate the princess.

You never know how that will go. Well. I guess you do know how that will go, and if you don’t I’m sure she’ll tell you.

Stay tuned.

Oh, she’s going to make us pay for having fun without her. Guaranteed.


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Truck safety earworms

The term earworm generally refers to a bit of music that’s trapped in your head, playing over and over inside your brain long after you heard the actual song. And that’s just what happened inside my brain today as I worked to weed my impossibly overgrown gardens.

With Congresswoman Norton

I keep hearing a mother’s voice as she described her young daughter’s journal, filled with life lessons, found two days after her twelve year old was killed in a school bus that was struck by a semi driven by a distracted driver. I hear another mother’s anguish as she described the crash that killed her seven year old sitting in the back seat of her stopped car when a semi slammed into the back of them. And the voices of the young adult children whose parents were killed when the semi hit them head on, going the wrong way down a mountain road. I hear the tremor in a survivor’s voice as she describes being pushed off a bridge by a semi. I hear the anguish in a husband’s voice as he talks about his wife and stepchildren gone in an instant.

Day 1 on the Hill, visiting my Representative.

I spent five days in Washington D.C. with these and many other families at the Truck Safety Coalition’s biannual conference we call Sorrow to Strength. It’s something of an emergence into grief, but it’s also a place to witness the rebuilding strength that comes from being together with others who have had similar experiences.

Before the press conference.

We spent Saturday getting to know each other, to offer comfort and hugs and empathetic tears. We laughed together too, over the silly things we miss about our loved ones lost to truck crashes, about the things we used to do but can’t any longer if we are injured survivors.

Representative Garcia, from Illinois, introduced the new bill to increase minimum insurance.

Sunday we buckled down and learned about the issues, many of which were contributing factors in our own crashes. This year we have four bills in Congress that we support, all focused on making the roads safer for everyone, truck drivers included.

Then, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we went to work, walking Capitol Hill and visiting offices of Senators and Representatives to educate, as well as transportation agencies to discuss the lack of rule making progress.

Things in Washington move with great deliberation.

It was hot, with temperatures in the 90s and a heat index well above that.

It was especially hot during a press conference we held on the Capitol grounds at noon on Tuesday. We were lucky to have three Congressmen introducing two new truck safety bills, and we were glad to support them by standing behind the podium holding pictures of our lost loved ones.

Kate talks about the multiple surgeries, costing millions, that her son needed after his crash.

But man, it was hot.

Regardless, our families were troopers and made it to all their assigned meetings, sometimes wringing wet, sometimes red faced, but there. People who never spoke in public before spoke to strangers in Congressional offices and spoke up at DOT meetings even while facing a row of men in suits.

And they did it all because of love.

Day 2, with one of my Senators who has cosponsored one of our bills.

Their love for those lost is bigger than any fear of the unknown. Bigger then the fear of being uncomfortable or sweaty or lost in the long marble halls of a Senate office building. Their love carried them through the telling of their stories over and over, reliving it each time, each time adding one more scar on top of the thousands of scars already lacerating their hearts.

A crash survivor being interviewed after the press conference.

And at the end of our time together there were more tears and hugs as we said goodbye to our Truck Safety Family, knowing that we’re never truly alone, even on our worst days, because these people have our hearts and our backs. Most of us will stay in touch through email and social media. And though we wish we didn’t have to, we’re ready to do it all again when D.C. calls.

Some of my Truck Safety family, ready to generate some change.

Love conquers all and our loved ones deserve to be remembered, not just for the way they died, or were injured, but for the way they lived. And that’s why I don’t mind the earworms dancing in my brain today.

We made time for ice cream.

It’s just another way of remembering them all.

Change is hard.


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Truck Safety – the details

It’s a very busy place, Washington DC.


It all started when my dad was killed by a tired semi-truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel and didn’t see the traffic stopped ahead of him early in the morning of December 23, 2004.

Since them members of my family have been traveling to Washington DC regularly to tell our story and lobby for safety on our nation’s roads. This past week my husband and I were there again, talking to the staff of House Representatives and Senators, as well as people at the DOT, about the bigger, heavier, longer trucks that are once again being proposed by some in the trucking industry.

Riding the metro to the Hill on a beautiful day.

Back in 2015 double 33 foot trailers were proposed by the trucking industry, they say because of a driver shortage. What they didn’t say is that adding 5 feet on each of two trailers, hauled in tandem, made the entire truck 83 feet, 8 inches long. That’s similar to an 8 story building. Try passing that on a busy freeway.

We worked long hours and got back to the hotel after dark most nights.

They also don’t tell you that it will take longer to stop, that the back trailer doesn’t track correctly going around corners and that they’re harder to drive, requiring a special endorsement on a driver’s commercial license.

In one of the lady’s rooms, mid century modern makeup chairs.

There’s already a shortage of drivers, finding experienced drivers to haul double 33 foot trailers isn’t going to be easy.

Mountain sculpture in the Hart Senate Building lobby.

Aside from the safety issues, many companies ship their goods ‘intermodal’ meaning they move over land on rails as well as highways, and across the ocean on ships. The 33 foot trailers won’t fit on rail cars as they are configured now, and container ships may have to change the way the trailers are stacked as well. Some people fear that smaller transport companies will be forced out of business as shippers and brokers move to the more competitive larger trailers to ship their goods, regardless of the level of safety attributed to these trailers.

Waiting for a shuttle I thought the metro lines above were interesting.

There’s an appropriations bill in the House of Representatives right now. It’s the kind of bill that ‘must pass’ because it funds most of the Federally mandated programs across the country. Some members of Congress have added amendments to the bill that we consider anti truck safety. Allowing for a study of the double 33 foot trailers is one of these amendments.

It wasn’t all work. We ate dinner down on the wharf near an old torpedo factory that has been turned into an artist loft.

You might think that we shouldn’t be afraid of studying something, and normally I’d agree. But there isn’t much data out there on double 33s, they are running on some roads of certain states, but not many. We’re concerned that the trucking industry will fund studies of their own, and of course those will be favorable.

Right now the amendment is still in the appropriations bill. An amendment offered by another Representative to strip it from the bill failed by a few votes. So we have work to do.

We walked up and down a lot of stairs.

And this is just one issue. There are so many more that I want to tell you about. We worked all week on the Hill, talking about speed limiters, hours of service, underride crashes and the bill sitting in Congress right now, Stop Underride, that needs to move out of committee.

One afternoon we even got to take some time off and visit the national zoo!

We walked between appointments, from the House side to the Senate side of the Hill and back again, in the hot, humid air of summer in DC. It was hard. But getting the call about Dad was harder and I reminded myself how important this all is.

And yes we got lucky and saw the famous pandas.

I know truck safety is not everyone’s thing. And I know some of you will have differing opinions on how to solve the problem of truck crashes on our highways. I have so much more to tell you, and to show you, about our trip to DC last week. But this is already too long, too boring, and just a little stressful.

We had one peaceful evening on the Mall.

So I put a few photos in for relief — just in case you’d rather just look at cool stuff. I’m OK with that too.

Studying before an appointment.

I’ll tell you more about our work in another post. Stay tuned.

The flight home was thankfully incident free.


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Retirement interruption

I interrupt this retirement to go back to work in DC, trying to be a catalysis for change, trying to get people with power to stop and listen, to open their minds to the possibility of doing something a different way.

To open their minds to the fact that they have the power to save lives.

It’s no easy task.

It’s only Wednesday and I’m already exhausted.

Stay tuned.


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Safety first

Safety is no accident!

Those of us working for truck safety appreciated all your support and kind words as we worked together to increase the safety on our roads. It’s been a tough few days for us as we gathered with determination to make a difference, many still raw from recent loss.

But it was amazing too.

I saw people with grief fresh on Saturday, sobbing through the initial telling of their stories, grow to tell those same stories calmly and firmly at the press conference on Tuesday. Friendships were forged that will last forever. People know they are not alone and progress is being made

Working the halls of Congress.

One of the most exciting things I saw during the conference was a short video clip of a side underride guard being tested by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In the first clip a mid-sized car was sent into the side of a semi trailer at 35 miles per hour, the standard speed the IIHS uses in test crashes. Without a side guard the car slides right under the trailer, the car’s safety features useless because the front of the vehicle doesn’t collide with anything. Air bags don’t deploy, the test dummy heads strike the side of the trailer. Death is probable.

In the second clip a side guard has been attached to a semi trailer, and the car sent speeding toward the trailer. The front of the vehicle crashes into the side guard, crumpling as it is designed to do. The passenger compartment is protected, in fact after the crash the driver door still opens and the occupants would have been minimally injured.

The passenger would survive!

Success!

Side and rear underride is a major safety issue, and one that The Truck Safety Coalition is focusing on this year. For many of our families it’s proof that finally someone is listening. So many of their loved ones died by sliding under a truck and finally we are making progress to stop that from happening in the future. The guard we saw is affordable, relatively light, and easy to install. And future iterations will be even lighter and more affordable. We believe that soon you’ll see them on the trucks driving near you on our nation’s roads.

I’m proud to be a part of this year’s Sorrow to Strength conference, proud to walk the halls of Congress, meet Members, talk to staff, support safety. Regardless of the political climate there is good work that will be done, good people to work with, good ideas that will be supported.

It wasn’t easy. My feet are tired and so is my head but my heart remains strong and my vision is clear. The roads are safer because of people like us, groups with no agenda other than safety. It takes work. But we’ll work on it forever.

Because safety is no accident.

Spreading the news.