Once again, another family has been torn to shreds by the misguided actions of another. This story repeats itself far too often throughout the United States and globe at large. A moment’s worth of poor judgment is all it takes to provoke a lifetime of suffering–and the end of many lives. I’ve been profiling stories of wrong-way crashes for more than five years now. Here is another case where multiple members of a family lose their lives due to the mindlessness of a fellow human being.
What happened to the Moore family?
Jennifer Moore, 46, and her daughter, Jaidyn, 9, as well as the family dog, were killed on May 25, 2019, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, by Samantha Winchester, 23, who also perished in the crash. Per police reports, the crash occurred at approximately 2 AM on Michigan’s Highway 14 in the Superior Township of Washtenaw County. Jennifer was driving eastbound on M-14 along with her husband Howard, 49, the assistant coach of the University of Wisconsin basketball team, their daughter, Jaidyn, and their son, Jerell, 13. Samantha was driving westbound in the eastbound lane and crashed into the Moore family vehicle. A third vehicle was hit in the crash as well and the driver survived with minor injuries.
Police responded to the crash within a few minutes. Jaidyn and Samantha died at the scene while Jennifer was transported to a local hospital and died after removal of life support on Saturday. Howard received third-degree burns while Jerell received minor injuries. Howard was later released from the hospital in early June while his son was released three days after the crash.
How could these deaths have been prevented?
Alcohol is deadly behind the wheel.
To be as blunt as possible, these deaths could have been prevented if Samantha had driven in the right direction down M-14 that night. Nearly every story from the time of the crash states that toxicology results are “pending,” but no updates on those results were ever made widely available. All signs point to her inebriation, however, as alcohol is almost always the reason behind high speed wrong-way crashes at night. I most recently wrote about such a story here involving Abby Michaels, who killed an entire family by driving drunk the wrong way in Ohio that same month.
We don’t know what compelled Samantha to drive the wrong way that night. We do know that her decision cost her her life, as well as the lives of two people who did not make the decision to drive the wrong way down the highway, as well as the family dog. And the survivors of the crash–a father and son–will now be condemned to live the rest of their lives without two of the people they cherished most in the world. Samantha’s family will assuredly feel the same loss.
It isn’t fair.
Alcohol is a death sentence when paired with an auto
I’ve written about the dangers of alcohol before; this isn’t the first fatal crash I’ve profiled on The Car Crash Detective, and it unfortunately is unlikely to be the last. This story repeats itself thousands of times a year in the United States and millions of times a year around the globe. The research shows that there is no safe amount of alcohol you can consume before you drive. This is why alcohol limits are so much lower in most European countries than they are in the United States; the knowledge is spreading that fatal crashes and impaired driving can and do occur at much lower levels of intoxication than previously thought.
There is no safe limit of alcohol a human being can drink before driving a vehicle. To paraphrase a famous film from decades gone, the only winning move is not to play.
Best practices aren’t a mystery. They save lives. Please learn them and share them. Don’t make Sam’s mistake.
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
After more than five years of constant writing about crashes and the damage they did to families, I took a hiatus to spend more time with mine. But couldn’t stay away. I kept coming across articles involving one senseless death after another. It was time to get back to work. This is one of the tragedies I came across during the time I spent away from The Car Crash Detective. As is too often the case, it involves the loss of an entire family due to the mindlessness of a fellow human being. These are their stories.
What happened to the Thompson family?
Timmy Thomson, 51, his wife Karen, 50, and their daughter, Tessa, 10, died the night of March 17, 2019 in Dayton, Ohio. Karen was a special education teacher at Taft Elementary in the Cincinnati Public School District while Tessa was a student at St. Susanna School. The family was on a return trip from visiting Karen’s family in the northern part of the state. They drove a Toyota Camry.
The family was southbound on I-75 at approximately 8:10 PM when hit head-on in the center lane by Abby Michaels, 21, who was northbound in the southbound lane in a white Kia sedan. She had apparently crossed the median, made a U-turn, and headed the wrong way in the center lane for approximately 10 seconds before hitting the Thomson vehicle. Timmy and his daughter died at the scene while Karen passed away some time later at a local hospital. Abby survived with serious but stable injuries.
What led Abby to drive the wrong way that night?
Per police reports, Abby was returning from a St. Patrick’s Day celebration she’d attended earlier in the day. She was dressed in a St. Patrick’s Day shirt, wore a number of plastic shamrock necklaces, and her cheek was covered in a temporary tattoo of a beer mug. The most significant details, however, included a Fireball whisky cup in her bag and beer flowing from her mouth when first responders attempted to get her to breathe after the crash. Additionally, Abby’s husband from June 2018, Kyle Pastorelle, had apparently filed for divorce from Abby on March 15, 2019, two days before the crash.
How could these deaths have been prevented?
Hire a car if you need to. Don’t drive drunk.
None of these deaths had to occur that night. They were completely preventable. Had Abby handed over the keys to a friend, called a cab, or spent $20 for a car hire via Uber, Lyft, or a similar service, an entire family would not have perished that night. Beyond that, free cab rides were available that night provided by Dayton and Montgomery County to encourage people to make safe driving decisions on a day known for alcoholic consumption. None of this was necessary.
Is it possible her recent divorce proceedings may have affected her mental and emotional state? Absolutely. Her drinking was not the problem; we celebrate and grieve in different ways. The problem was her decision to drive despite having drunk. This split second decision cost three people their lives–three people who had no connection to her besides the misfortune of being in her path that night.
Alcohol is a death sentence when paired with an auto
I’ve written about the dangers of alcohol before; this isn’t the first fatal crash I’ve profiled on The Car Crash Detective, and it unfortunately is unlikely to be the last. This story repeats itself thousands of times a year in the United States and millions of times a year around the globe. The research shows that there is no safe amount of alcohol you can consume before you drive. This is why alcohol limits are so much lower in most European countries than they are in the United States; the knowledge is spreading that fatal crashes and impaired driving can and do occur at much lower levels of intoxication than previously thought.
A later report stated Abby was legally intoxicated with a BAC post crash of .099, slightly higher than the Ohio legal limit of .08. However, .08 was already far too much alcohol to consume before driving a multi-ton vehicle. Half of that would have been too much. There is no safe limit above zero.
Best practices aren’t a mystery. They save lives. Please learn them and share them. Don’t make Abby’s mistake.
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
I’ve spent the better part of a decade advocating for changes in our driving culture, but I still don’t like writing about car crashes or the pain they being families. With few exceptions, I know none of these people personally, but there are many who do. Each casualty is an entire world lost to someone. I hope to keep writing until our roads are so safe I have no more deaths to profile. Each story is a tragedy, and if we learn anything from it to reduce the likelihood of a future needless death, then something good will have come from each passing.
What happened to the Machado family?
Today’s tragedy involves the Machado family. The crash occurred on April 20, 2019. The family headed south on US 41 in North Fort Meyers, Florida in a 2000Jeep Wrangler driven by Jesus, 36. For whatever reason, he hit the median curb, triggering a rollover. The Jeep rolled several times before coming to a rest. Jesus was immediately thrown from the vehicle and died at the scene. Keli suffered severe injuries and died in the hospital six days after the crash. Their five year old daughter, Khaleesi, was hospitalized in critical condition while their two sons, Anthony, 11, and Vincent, 8, survived with minor injuries.
How could these casualties have been prevented?
While it’s impossible to know the full truth of what happened that night, there are a number of inferences we can draw to help us understand why two members of the family passed away, why one was severely injured, and why two survived with minor injuries.
While relatives have speculated that Jesus drove into the median because the Jeep was hit by another vehicle that fled the scene, no witnesses or evidence have corroborated this idea. Statistically speaking, given the fact that half of all vehicular fatalities are single vehicle crashes and there is no proof of intervention by another vehicle, the most likely cause of the crash is driver error. He might have been talking to his wife, checking his phone, or simply falling asleep, given the time of the crash. Whatever the reason, he hit the curb and the vehicle either rolled as a result of the impact our due to his attempts to correct its trajectory. Once the rollover began, the fate of each occupant depended wholly on decisions made hours, months, or even years ago.
The Wrangler is a versatile SUV. But it’s not a safe one in a rollover. The Machados drove the 2-door version. The 4-door is no safer in a rollover.
The Jeep Wrangler is one of the least safe vehicles you can have the misfortune of occupying during a rollover as it does not have a roof designed to support its weight. The Wrangler has a cloth top, which is why it doesn’t have a roof score by the IIHS (a “good” score means the roof is capable of supporting four times the weight of the vehicle). The fact that it doesn’t have *any* score means it doesn’t even have to abide by the NHTSA’s regulations for passenger vehicles (those weighing under roughly 6,500 lbs) stipulating an ability to support at least 1.5 times the weight of the vehicle. To put it simply, the Wrangler is treated as a convertible when it comes to rollover safety, and when you’re in a convertible, you’re as good as dead in a rollover. Keep this in mind the next time you think of riding in, driving, or buying a Jeep Wrangler.
An unbuckled occupant is a death sentence in a crash
Jesus was ejected from the vehicle. He was the only occupant who left the vehicle during the rollover. We know from reports that he was unbuckled, which is a death sentence in any crash above school zone speeds and in a rollover at nearly any speed. It’s very, very difficult to be ejected from a vehicle in a crash if you’re a buckled occupant, especially if the adjacent door does not open before the vehicle comes to rest.
Keli’s severe injuries likely occurred from one of three factors: the possibility that she was unbuckled, her husband, or the vehicle in which she was an occupant. The first scenario is the most likely: if her husband’s death was assured by being unbuckled, hers would have been as well. The second scenario is the most morbid; it’s highly possible her husband, who would have been the equivalent of a 250 lb projectile launched at her at 50 mph, could have mortally injured her by hitting her in one of a thousand different ways while he was propelled around the front part of the vehicle due to his unbuckled status. This alone would easily have been enough to kill her. Finally, it’s possible that the roof on the Jeep (which, as you remember from above, was not designed to support the weight of the vehicle at rest, never mind from a drop or during a high speed rollover), caved in toward the front of the vehicle if he initial impacts during the rollover occurred there, reducing her survival space and causing significant head trauma.
We don’t know what happened to her. But the odds were against her due to her proximity to her unbuckled husband. We also don’t know if she was buckled. If she was not, that was its own death sentence, regardless of her husband’s presence. However, given the fact that “it was unknown” if she were buckled while it was clearly known that her husband was not and that her boys were, it is highly likely she was unbuckled.
If your child is under 10, s/he needs a booster. The Oobr is one of the best on the market.
Khaleesi’s injuries could have occurred due to compromization of survival space due to a roof cave in, but I suspect they are most likely to have occurred due to improper restraint. Specifically, she most likely was not wearing a seat belt.This is particularly likely to be the case when you consider the fact that there are only four seats in a 2-door Jeep Cherokee, and two of them in the back were occupied by her brothers, who were buckled.
That said, let’s take a look at best practices for children her age. The safest position for a 5-year old child (e.g., a kindergartner) is a rear-facing harnessed seat. Indeed, this is the safest position for adults and children of all ages. However, virtually no 5-year-olds rear-face in the United States (you’d have to go to Sweden to see this in appreciable numbers). The second best position is either forward-facing and harnessed or in a high-back booster if the child is mature enough to sit properly all the time. However, the stats show that most parents aren’t doing any of the above; most parents of 5-year old children are using seat belts. And a child placed in a seat belt before ages 10-12 is at a significantly greater risk of injury than the same child in a booster, regardless of how mature s/he is. Yes, middle schoolers often need booster seats. Pre-teens too.
If the Machados were like most parents, they strapped Khaleesi in, but at that age, a seat belt isn’t enough. And if she’d been boostered but wasn’t sitting properly, the booster was useless. News reports have not indicated whether or not she was restrained. However, again, given that a news report identified the husband as unbuckled, the boys as buckled, and the condition of mother and daughter as unknown, the most likely explanation is that she was unbuckled.
The boys may have escaped with minimal injury simply because they were larger and more capable of sustaining the crash forces while seat belted than Khaleesi. As larger children, they’d have had stronger bones and muscles and would have been more likely to fit their seat belts and not submarine out of them the way a younger child would. However, let’s be blunt:
The boys survived with minimal injuries because they appear to have been the only occupants in the vehicle who were wearing seat belts.
We know they were restrained from reports. We know their sister was unrestrained because there literally were not enough seats for her in the vehicle, never mind enough seat belts. We know their father was unrestrained and we are almost certain that their mother was unrestrained as well.
Seat belts made the lion’s share of the difference in their survival.
The statistics of car crashes don’t paint a portrait of survival
This is speculation. But statistically speaking, these were the most likely configurations of each individual, and combined with the knowledge of the vehicle in which they were traveling and what crash forces do to individuals in such a crash environment, these are the most likely results. Thirty-five thousand people aren’t dying a year in the United States because they’re bad people or because they deserved death. They die because of a lack of knowledge and usage of best practices, whether at the individual or societal level. You need to be restrained safely. You need to drive safely. You need reasonably safe vehicles. And most of all, you need safe infrastructure, which includes a culture of fear and respect toward the fact that our bodies are no match for the equivalent of being pushed out of 5-story buildings with the expectation of survival. These are the forces you’re dealing with in a 50 mph crash. Statistically speaking, you’re not going to make it, and if you do, at least one of your loved ones won’t.
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
Each of these deaths is a tragedy. Each of these deaths is preventable.
Unfortunately, as summer rolls around again in the United States, so do the endless stories of children left in hot vehicles. This isn’t the first of the year, but as with every tragedy, it is worth mentioning and remembering.
Per news reports, a five-month-old girl was found by her own mother in a van outside the Ewing’s Love & Hope Preschool and Academy in Jacksonville, Florida. Mom called the school for an update on her daughter and staff told her that they had not seen her. The mother herself went to the center, found her daughter in the van, was told by staff that they had no idea how long she’d been left in the vehicle…it’s too much to imagine. She was rushed to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead that afternoon. Per reports, she had been in the van for at least five hours, from 8 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon when discovered.
How can daycare vehicular heat deaths be prevented?
Almost all of these kinds of deaths are preventable. In this case, it wasn’t the standard situation of a parent forgetting her child in a vehicle; here the hired, professional, surrogate parents (because that’s what you are when you’re a teacher; you’re a professional, surrogate parent) did. There is literally nothing the child’s parents could have done to prevent this short of not trusting the school with their children that day, which defeats the purpose of school itself. The school could have prevented or at least significantly reduced the odds of such a death occurring through a number of methods, including a checklist system in which each student checked onto the bus needed to be checked off the bus before the bus driver could lock the vehicle, or through a walk-through system in which the bus driver would walk from the front to the back of the bus before locking it upon his or her return to the front of the vehicle. There are many ways to reduce the likelihoods of these tragedies; unfortunately, they arrived too late for this family.
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
Cara Klemm, 31 of Brillion, Wisconsin, was killed in a collision while driving what appears to have been a red 2009-2014 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen.
The collision occurred with an unnamed male driver from Gillett who was driving a dump truck on Thursday, April 6th, 2017 at around 10 AM. The collision occurred at the intersection of Highway32/ 57 and Country Road Z / Hill Road in Holland in Brown County, Wisconsin. Cara died at the scene. The dump truck driver survived and was treated at the scene for minor injuries. Cara’s 3 children, Wyatt, 6; Wesley, 4; and Wesley, 1 also survived with mild injuries. Aside from her children, Cara is survived by her husband, the father of the three boys.
How
Per reports from ABC 2 WBAY, Cara was eastbound on County Z and did not stop at a stop sign. The Jetta was hit in the front by a southbound dump truck described by the Brown County Sheriff’s office as “fully loaded”; the crash appears to have occurred at the intersection.
Per Lt. John Bain from the Sheriff’s Office, neither alcohol nor drugs appeared to be factors in the crash. Cara died at the scene while her sons, who were in car seats, were mildly injured. The dump truck driver was treated at the scene. An image of the vehicle in storage after the crash is available here while video of the vehicle is available here. Investigators later stated she had no chance of survival due to the primary impact occurring just forward of the driver’s seat. However, they noted that the three car seats in the back seat were virtually untouched. Captain Dan Sanberg, one of the first responders from the Brown County Sheriff’s Office described the seats as age appropriate and credited them with helping hte children survive with minor injuries. Per Kimberly Hess from the Center for Childhood Safety’s description, the 1-year old was rear-facing.
After the crash, Cara’s husband, Teddy Klemm, credited his wife’s proper use of car seats for saving their sons’ lives. He then went on to plead with other parents to properly restrain their children in car seats whenever they traveled. He noted how he was always lazy and would simply let her strap them in, but how she would always make sure seats were anchored with tightly strapped harnesses. Teddy noted that Wyatt had two black eyes likely from hitting the front vehicle seat with his face, but did not have additional injuries. Wesley, who was sitting behind his mother in a high-back booster, apparently received a slight cut above his eye. Wiley received a few scratches on the top of his head, but was otherwise perfectly fine.
“It was kind of hard to hear from him that he was checking her over and pushing on her and opening her eyes and all that stuff to say, come on, mom wake up, and she didn’t,” says Teddy.
…
“Be more comprehensive, because I’m telling you, I would never in a million years expected this to ever happen, and it can, and it did,” he says.
…
“You share your life together and you think you’re going to grow old together to watch your kids grow up and be good wholesome adults someday by all of your labors, and something like this comes along and just throws it all upside down,” said Teddy Klemm.
Why
The Jetta SportWagen is one of the safest vehicles on the road. But like every other vehicle, it isn’t designed to protect occupants from side impacts above ~30 mph.
This is yet another senseless tragedy on our bloodbath of a road network. Reviewing the facts as presented, it seems clear that Cara was responsible for the collision. We don’t know how she was distracted (e.g., a phone, fatigue, daydreaming, talking to her children), but we can analyze the crash and the larger context of the tragedy.
The Jetta SportWagen
The ’09-’14 Jetta SportWagen is one of the safest cars on the road, and one of the best vehicles you could ask to be in before an imminent side impact. It received a “good” score overall and in all subcategories in the IIHS side impact test as well as a 5 star NHTSA side score. The side impact intrusion resistance as measured by the IIHS clocked in at 15.5 cm, which is one of the best side impact scores you can get in a station wagon even in 2017. It was a good vehicle.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly what I wrote when describing a similar crash from this past summer involving a young mother, a station wagon, rural roads, and a side impact while she drove with her 3 children. However, in that crash, which also involved one of the safest vehicles of the road, the mother (who was pregnant) and her 3 sons died. So what made the difference?
As in that case, the Jetta SportWagen was designed to handle 143.7KJ of kinetic energy in a side impact collision safely. In my experience calculating forces, individuals tend to survive up to 200% of designed force tolerances in their vehicles. Above that, however, survival odds drop significantly; I’d estimate the survival rate at 300% of expected forces drops to somewhere around 33%. Around how many KJ of energy did the dump truck transfer?
I’ve written about dump truck crashes before (e.g., here and here). The results are very frequently fatal, simply due to the massive amounts of kinetic energy carried by even empty dump trucks. A fully loaded truck can weigh 60,000 pounds or more. Using that as a baseline estimate and given the likely speeds of the collision (given the road design, I’d estimate 55 mph), the collision likely impacted at least 8.23 MJ (8,226 KJ) of energy into the dump truck / SportWagen. That would ordinarily be a fatal amount of energy for the SportWagen (or any passenger vehicle) to handle, especially when keeping in mind that the standard side impact test simulates 143KJ of energy (a 3300-lb sled impacting a vehicle at 31 mph). So if the SportWagen faced 5752%, or 57x the force it was designed to make survivable, how did anyone in it survive?
While it would be easy to give credit to the car seats, we do need to be realistic. Orphan seats they were; immortal seats they are not. Children do still die in rear-facing car seats; it’s just far less common due to how incredibly protective they are since they work with physics instead of against it. In this case, an examination of the photos and videos of the post-crash SportWagen provide the likely answers. It appears the car was impacted directly ahead of the driver door; this likely spun the vehicle severely and pushed it far away. It likely didn’t roll it, as evidenced by the virtually pristine right side of the vehicle (visible in the video above).
However, the forces of the dump truck were likely absorbed by the engine bay and the motion of the vehicle, with the most dangerous impact occurring away from the back seat area where the boys were stationed. Cara likely perished due to her proximity to the epicenter, while the boys survived due to being well restrained far from the impact, relatively speaking. It’s not the best explanation, but it’s the best I can come up with after reviewing this and similar cases in the past. Had the point of impact occurred directly at the driver’s door or any farther toward the rear of the vehicle, all three boys would likely have perished, as was the case in the tragedy I referenced above involving Lindsey and her boys.
Vision Zero
As usual, though, as tempting as it is to look at this as one more case study of personal responsibility, we mustn’t start and stop by shaking our heads at the fact that Cara Klemm didn’t stop at the stop sign at the intersection. Why she didn’t stop doesn’t matter very much if our goal is to eliminate all car deaths, as we’ll never reach a point where every driver is paying attention 100% of the time. I certainly don’t, and I don’t believe there is another living being who does. I’ve just been lucky not to have not being paying attention when my life depended on it. A better approach is to look toward best practices–i.e., Vision Zero principles–so see how such a collision could have been either avoided or mitigated. And best practices here indicate, as they did in the Schmidt case, that a road such as that which enabled this collision should never have existed.
Once again, VZ principles forbid speed limits above 50 kph (31mph) at intersections where the potential for side impacts exist. Now, given the fact that the vehicle that hit the SportWagen weighed up to 20x more than a typical passenger vehicle, it’s entirely possible the SportWagen would not have been able to protect Cara anyway. In fact, a 60,000 lb truck would still have delivered 2.45MJ at 30 mph, a life-ending amount of force. However, given the fact that Cara’s sons survived the crash which involved forces 3x higher, it’s entirely possible that Cara might have survived had the forces been 3x lower. Remember, it wasn’t a direct hit to the occupant cabin of the SportWagen–had that been the case, everyone in the vehicle would have died. And as much of an advocate as I am for proper car seat use, I don’t believe even rear-facing all 3 children would have kept them alive from a direct hit by a dump truck at speed. But the lower the speeds of all vehicles involved in a given collision, the wider the window of survivability opens.
In this case, it didn’t open enough for Cara. But the fact that her sons survived meant that something in this crash was survivable, and had the intersection’s speeds been governed by best practices, it’s possible she might have lived.
35,000 Americans will die this year on the road. You don't have to be one of them. A car seat and car safety blog to promote best practices for families.
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
