Today on Midday, a conversation about trucking safety, and efforts to address the serious and persistent problem of fatal truck crashes on America’s highways. Those crashes take the lives of more than 4,000 Americans every year — more than a dozen fatalities every day. Thousands more are injured. And thousands more are left to grieve for the victims.
Brian Kuebler is an investigative reporter at WMAR Television. Ten years ago, he covered the story of Ed Slattery, a government economist whose wife Susan was killed on the Ohio Turnpike when a tractor-trailer driver who’d fallen asleep at the wheel slammed his rig into her car at 55mph.
Slattery’s two young sons, Steven and Matthew, were also in the car and both were severely injured. Steven fully recovered, but Matthew, the younger boy, sustained permanent brain damage.
That horrible day marked the beginning of a long and difficult recovery for Matthew, and Ed’s long crusade to improve truck safety, and to advocate for the disabled.
Brian wrote a book about Ed’s journey from victim to activist. It’s called The Long Blink: The True Story of Trauma, Forgiveness, and One Man’s Fight for Safer Roads.
Brian Kuebler and Ed Slattery join Tom in Studio A.
This conversation was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook page. Watch the video here.