Every week, I read crash reports.
Just plain black-and-white summaries written by officers, troopers and deputies after somebody’s worst day became paperwork.
Most of them follow the same rhythm. Location. Time of collision. Weather conditions. Narrative. Injuries.
And then there’s the line that makes my stomach drop every single time.
“Not in use.” Seat belt not in use. Helmet not in use. Personal flotation device not in use. Every single time, I pause there for a second longer than the rest.
Because before I even get to the injuries section, I already know where this is headed.
It’s never dramatic in the reports themselves. The wording is clinical. Matter-of-fact. But those three words carry an awful amount of weight.
“Not in use.” A while back, I covered a drowning. One of those moments that settles into your chest and refuses to leave. Buried in the report was that same phrase about a life jacket. Not in use.
I’ve read it after ATV crashes involving kids. I’ve read it after motorcycle wrecks where somebody “laid the bike down” after swerving.
I’ve read it after rollover accidents where a person was ejected from the vehicle.
And every single time, you can almost hear the thought process that happened minutes before everything changed forever.
“It’s just a short drive.” “I’m only going down the road.” “The water’s calm.” “I’ve ridden a thousand times.” “I don’t need it.”
“We’ll be fine.”
The terrifying thing is that most of those people probably fully believed that.
Because none of us wake up in the morning expecting to become the cautionary tale. Tragedy always sounds like something that happens to somebody else until suddenly it doesn’t.
We’ve become weirdly casual with risk. People drive while staring at phones. They speed down back roads they know by heart. They put children on four-wheelers without helmets because “we’re just out on the property.” They climb into boats without life jackets because they can swim. They skip seat belts because the gas station is only two blocks away.
Carelessness has become so normal that we barely even recognize it anymore.
And distraction? Distraction is killing people daily.
Not metaphorically. Literally. A notification. A text message. A quick glance at GPS. Reaching for dropped fries. Turning around to talk to somebody in the back seat. All tiny decisions that people make every day without thinking about how little time it actually takes to cross the center line.
I think what haunts me most about these reports is how ordinary they are right before they aren’t.
Most crashes don’t begin with recklessness that looks cinematic, they begin with normalcy. Familiar roads. Good weather. A routine afternoon. A person who has driven the same route home a thousand times before.
Then one moment of distraction collides with one moment of bad luck.
And after that, somebody has to make phone calls.
Somebody has to stand in a hospital hallway. Somebody has to explain to a small child why mom or dad isn’t coming home.
Somebody has to identify a body. All because of a choice that felt insignificant 30 seconds earlier.
The older I get, the less interested I am in looking “uncool” for being careful.
Wear the life jacket. Wear the helmet. Click the seat belt. Put the phone down. I promise you no obituary has ever included the sentence, “Well at least they looked relaxed and carefree while it happened.” Or “They always responded to texts immediately.”
There is no trophy for proving you didn’t need basic safety equipment.
And for the love of everything, stop assuming bad things only happen to careless people somewhere else.
The crash reports sitting in my inbox every week are filled with regular people. Good people. Loved people. People who probably had dinner plans later that evening. People who thought they had more time.
People who thought “It won’t happen to me.” So if you take nothing else from this weeks column, let it be this: the smallest safety decision you make today could be the reason you make it home tonight.
Be kind to your neighbors, Be kind to your pets, And please, please be kind to the people waiting for you to come home.