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Business frequently takes me to an office about 250 miles from home. I gave up flying this route long before 9/11 because it's just easier to drive anywhere less than five hours away. Normally the trips takes three and a half to four hours. It really depends on how much Diet Coke I drink before (and during) the trip. And lately, it depends on how many bad drivers are traveling at the same time.

Barely an hour into the trip home this afternoon, traffic came to a complete stop, then crawled along at speeds under 35 m.p.h. for the next 30 minutes. I still have no idea why. I do know, however, why just 90 minutes later traffic stopped again.

Someone had been ejected from a car during a vehicle crash and was lying on the side of the road, two lanes away from the car, being worked on fervently by paramedics. I don't know if the victim was male or female, young or old. All I know is they had on blue jeans and were covered in blood. I said a prayer for their survival as my car crept by, just inches away. And I wondered aloud if they had been wearing their seatbelt.

My nephew's good friend was killed in a car accident on Wednesday. He was only 17 years old. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration lists auto accidents as the eighth leading cause of death in our country and the number one cause of death for people from three through 33 years old. Accident statistics are shocking. Over 25% of Americans have been involved in an accident in the past five years. Of those that died, more than half were not wearing seatbelts. In Florida, there were 2,074 accident-related deaths in 2003. 1,236 were not wearing seatbelts. Now, I'm no math major, but even I can understand stats like that. And these stats can be changed!

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