Straight Reporting of Cause of Crashes Saves Lives

To the Editor;
I would like to comment on several recent letters to the editor concerning the tragic accident on Hollywood Road last weekend. While I can understand the grief for the victims, I believe some of your readers lost sight of the overriding message that your paper was conveying. Namely, providing insight to accident causality and the root causes of the accident. I believe St. Mary's Today should be complimented in the coverage of local events, however lurid they may seem.

What I learned about the accident was that the driver was operating at a speed greater than the conditions warranted. Whether the speed was 45 mph or 10 mph is irrelevant. The lessons learned is that the vehicle was exceeding a speed that was considered safe for the occupants and, most importantly, the protection of others on the road.

In years past, I owned a consulting practice that, under contract by the U.S. Government, investigated thousands of boating, motor vehicular and aircraft accidents. I also performed numerous accident investigations of fatalities in high risk occupations.
Statically, the primary cause of these accidents was human error.

Our findings indicated that the major cause of these accidents was task experience in the vehicle. For example, total experience driving automobiles was near irrelevant; the critical element was the training and experience of the specific vehicle being operated at the time of the accident.

The results of our findings were published with the hope that people would learn from the mistakes of others.

The readers of southern Maryland are fortunate that there is a forum which provides information to the public that might save lives in the future.

James J. Davis
Leonardtown

(Editors note: This reader gets it right.   Clearly the conclusions of the investigation into the crash which claimed two lives on Jan. 29, 2005 impacted the lives of the families and friends of the deceased.   Being grief stricken does not give license to those left behind to block the results of the investigation of the crash from being made public, no matter how painful those conclusions may be.  This newspaper regularly reports on fatal crashes in Southern Maryland and this is the first time that caustic remarks and demands to change the reports have been received, some made politely and others made rudely. This newspaper is a pro-life newspaper with reports made in an effort to save lives not to wallow in gore and is read by those who choose to read it. Those who do not like it can simply not read it.)