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How many driver safety tips can you think of? We have had them drilled into our heads since before we could legally sit behind the wheel.
Wear your seat belt
Don't speed
Stop at all red lights and stop signs
Obey all yield signs no one ever yielded themselves into a collision
Create space remember the two second rule
Slow down in rain and snow
Maintain the health of your tires
Never play chicken with a train
The list goes on and on. I can still hear my father calmly chanting these in my ear as I first ventured out on the road more than twenty years ago. But there is a driver safety tip that is sorely missed on the lists that are out there. It is mentioned in a round about way, but not in the context I am referring to, unfortunately for hundreds of children each year.
May 21, 2008, in the driveway of her own home, little Maria Sue Chapman was killed by a vehicle driven by her older brother. She was just 5 years old and the youngest of the six children of Christian music singer Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife Mary Beth. That tragic day started as a great family celebration. The Chapmans had many reasons to celebrate their oldest daughter had just gotten engaged, their son Caleb was graduating from high school, and little Maria had just passed her 5th birthday the week before. But everything changed when her 17 year old brother accidentally backed over her in the family's SUV. Maria was taken by life flight to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee where she died later that evening.
But Maria Sue Chapman was not the only child on May 21, 2008, to be tragically killed in this way. In Swisher, Iowa, a 22-month-old little girl was struck by a car driven by a family friend. The visitor was in her car chatting with the child's mother before she left; the little girl was sitting in a stroller beside her mother. The child's mother gathered up the family dogs to get them out of the driveway, not knowing that the toddler had climbed out of her stroller. Thinking that the baby was still sitting in the stroller beside her, the mother signaled to her visitor that all was clear for her to back out of the driveway. She was tragically wrong.
In Garland, Texas, on the evening of May 21, 2008, a two-year-old little boy was lying in the front yard with his father and brother watching the stars while their mother was grocery shopping. Without realizing it, the father fell asleep as they lay out there. When the mother returned home
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Driver safety: Don't take risks
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