Remembering lost son, Ga. family works for 'Drive Safer Sunday'

<p>The holiday traffic that will clog the nation's highways Sunday is more than just an annual inconvenience for Steve Owings.</p><p>It's a heartbreaking reminder of the day three years ago when his son Cullum was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer during his drive back to school in Virginia.</p><p>"We'll wake up to it every day for the rest of our lives," said Owings, who has channeled his grief into Road Safe America, his Atlanta-based nonprofit group dedicated to promoting driver safety. "We want to save others from that."</p><p>Road Safe America recently succeeded in getting the U.S. Senate to declare this Sunday as Drive Safer Sunday. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has made the same declaration for Owings' home state.</p><p>Experts say the holidays, when millions of people cram into cars for long drives to visit family, are one of the most dangerous times of the year on the nation's roads.</p><p>The AAA automotive club predicts 31 million people will be driving 50 miles or more during Thanksgiving week, and the National Safety Council estimates 610 people may die and 33,000 be seriously injured in traffic crashes over the holiday weekend.</p><p>"Thanksgiving's the most intense travel period of the year, when you look at the sheer numbers of people taking to the skies and highways in a short period of time," AAA spokesman Justin McNaull said. "It makes for crowded, and sometimes treacherous, roads."</p><p>It was Dec. 1, 2002, when Cullum Owings and his younger brother, Pierce _ both students at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. _ left their parents' home in Atlanta after visiting during their Thanksgiving break.</p><p>That morning, the Owings family had attended church and eaten breakfast together, even discussing safe driving during the meal.</p><p>That night, on a Virginia interstate, Cullum, a 22-year-old senior business major who planned to join the Peace Corps, had stopped in traffic when a speeding tractor-trailer came up behind him. He attempted to swerve his car into the highway's median, but the truck barreled into the driver's side of the vehicle, pinning Cullum's car against a stone embankment. He died before rescue workers could get him out.</p><p>Pierce Owings suffered only cuts and bruises.</p><p>"Cullum's last move probably saved his little brother's life," Steve Owings said. "He did the only thing he could do."</p><p>Owings said the truck driver was charged with reckless driving and spent a month in jail.</p><p>Owings, a financial adviser, is now doing all he can to prevent similar tragedies.</p><p>Georgia's two senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, led this month's Senate resolution declaring the day as Drive Safer Sunday. It calls on schools, clergy and law enforcement around the country to do more to encourage safe driving.</p><p>"We must do a better job of educating all drivers to be safer on the road," said Isakson, who once employed Pierce Owings as an intern when Isakson was a member of the U.S. House.</p><p>Last year, more than 42,000 people were killed and nearly 2.8 million injured in roughly 6.2 million traffic crashes on U.S. roads, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.</p><p>In addition to promoting driver safety, Owings's group has formed a coalition that is petitioning the federal government for new rules regulating the speed of tractor-trailers.</p><p>Owings would like to see the government require that speed regulators, or governors, that already come equipped on new big rigs be activated. He'd like them to limit the speed of tractor-trailers to 65 mph.</p><p>"There's just absolutely no reasonable argument for letting things that weigh 40 times what a passenger car weighs go as fast as they want to," Owings said.</p><p>Mike Russell, a spokesman for the American Trucking Association, said his group supports lowering the national speed limit to 65 mph for all vehicles. But making trucks travel slower than other vehicles would increase the potential for accidents, he said, because more motorists would be attempting to pass the slower tractor-trailers.</p><p>"Split speed limits are one of those proposals that more or less verify the law of unintended consequences," Russell said. "While they may be put forward for good intentions, they actually cause more contact between trucks and passenger vehicles."</p><p>Owings said he will keep working to honor his son's memory and make changes to protect others.</p><p>"We want it done yesterday, because 15 more people will die today," he said. "Every one of those lives is awfully precious."</p><p>___</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x1cdebe4)</p><p>HASH(0x1cdfe70)</p>

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