7/29/2019 Making It Click: Day 1 Part 4

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east of Montvale, not far from whereErnie Havens was killed, a green BPsign pops up. The gas stations whitelights illuminate a small section ofthe roads northern shoulder. In itsshadow, five low-slung houses standnext to the highway.

Behind those houses, a wide rect-angular clearing sits vacant. Thatswhere Lewis Allen Dickenson beganteaching himself to drive when hewas about 12. And years ago, beforeBilly Dickenson began raising Allen as he calls him in the house nextto the station, thats where he taughthimself to drive.

Matter of fact, we lived in a housenext door to this one when I was akid, said Billy, a 54-year-old truckdriver. This house right here was avacant field and the one on the other

side was a vacant field. So Daddyused to let me drive his pickup truckaround the yard out there like that,too.

Allen Dickenson died in a crashnear his family home in October.Though he wasnt driving, the15-year-old Liberty High School Stu-dent was riding unbelted and wasejected.

Billy said his son was enamoredwith cars and with driving. He hadalready detailed his ambitions ofbecoming a diesel mechanic in themilitary and returning home to workon cars.

Every time we went somewherehe wanted to drive, Billy said. Icould say, Im going up to Bedford,Im going into Roanoke or Im goinginto town hed be out there in the

drivers seat waiting for me to comeout.

Billy had planned to pass a 1978pickup truck down to Allen onDec. 12, what would have been his16th birthday.

Ive had that old truck for abunch of years, done a lot of work onit, he said. I call it my rust bucketbecause its an old beat-up truck, butI kept it in good mechanical condi-tion. He wanted to do the body workon it. He wanted to fix it back up andpaint it and everything like that.

For the Dickensons and manyother rural Virginian families, carsare not reserved exclusively forgoing from point A to point B.

When I was young we used to runaround the back roads running wide

open, Billy said. Ive been in an oldtruck when a guy rolled it up on the

bank. We got out, pushed it back upon the wheels and took off again.

Billy said residents of more urbanareas like the northern region ofVirginia, where 84 percent of peoplein the front seats buckle up likelydont think about cars without traffic.

Its a whole lot faster pace, hesaid. Down here everything is morelaid back. Up there everything is socongested. Theres more population,more high-speed highways. Downhere, its just riding old railroads. Youmight ride for an hour and never seenobody.

Because of the setting, Billy said,rural residents often feel comfortablewithout the belt.

Now if we took long trips wedwear it, he said. But short trips,maybe going here to Bedford 10-12

miles, 15 miles a lot of times wedidnt wear it.

Porter, the ODU researcher, saidrural roads are actually among themost dangerous. In addition to thecomparatively higher speed limit onmany rural routes, the roads may lackguard rails or wide shoulders.

They dont give as much forgive-ness to driver errors, mistakes andrisks, Porter said.

Drivers who lose control or driftto the side of the road on U.S. 460near Montvale dont have the optionof correcting themselves on a shoul-der or letting a guardrail catch theircars. They are likely to encounter adeep roadside ditch, an embankmentor dense forest moments after theircars shift off course.

Facing those prospects, drivers

jerk the wheel back toward the pave-ment, often overcorrecting and flip-

ping their vehicles. Others cant reactfast enough to muster an attempt atstraightening out the vehicle.

Lewis Allen Dickensons parentssaid he usually wore his seat belt more often than they did. But the15-year-old didnt put it on when hehopped in the car with family friendAaron Scott Jayne in October for aquick test ride in the car Jayne hadjust acquired.

Just a li ttle ways down U.S. 460from Dickensons home, the car

Jayne was driving hit one of thoseembankments and flipped. Withoutthe seat belt, Dickenson was ejected.

Im sure it would have had tomake a difference, Billy said. Whatactually killed my son was he hit hishead on the asphalt when it threwhim out of the car. They said that the

way the thing rolled, it threw him upin the air and he came down righton his head, and then slid across thepavement.

Longstanding habits

Although Alex Havens is not surehow to stop the tragedies resultingfrom unbelted traffic crashes, hewould start by suggesting the stateenlarge those blue signs he oftenpasses. But their message hints at anunderlying reason for their existence and for their relat ive lack of effec-tiveness in rural areas.

Its a law we can live with, readsthe text under the main slogan. Andfor many drivers in the states south-west region, Virginias seat belt lawis just that something with whichthey can cope.

Police cannot stop a Virginiadriver solely because an adult isnt

wearing a seat belt. The states seatbelt law is a secondary offense, a vio-lation that only be ticketed when acar is stopped for another violation.

Porter said industry research hasshown that a conservative perspec-tive on the governments role oftencorrelates with the decision to forgoseat belts.

The many reasons drivers skiptheir seat belts are nearly impos-sible to address. And there are fewsurefire ways to change longstand-ing habits. Alex Havens said he hasbeen convinced, but he had to learnthe hard way.

A different outcome

Suffering from a sinus headache,Alex Havens left work early on

July 30, 2011, a little more than a year

after Ernies crash. He took FranklinRoad through town to avoid the high-ways evening traffic as he headedhome to Boones Mill.

Driving south near CarilionRoanoke Memorial Hospital, Alexwent over a bump and felt his 1998Ford F-150 veer right. While he wasstruggling with the steering wheel,the right front tire hit the end of aconcrete barrier on the bridge thatcrosses the Roanoke River. The truckwas traveling no faster than 35 mph.

Still, the right side of the trucklifted off the ground.

Im coming to see you, Ernie,Alex Havens said. Thats the firstthing I thought during that impact.

Alex lurched forward. But theseat belt tightened around his chestand waist. The truck overturned and

landed on the drivers side.When Alex refocused his eyes, he

saw his hands resting on pavementand the tiny pieces of glass that usedto be the drivers side window of hispickup truck.

If it hadnt been for that seat belt,Id have been on the dashboard orgoing through the glass, he said. Mywhole body was in that seat.

The seat belt was the only thingthat kept Alex off the pavement. Itwas the difference between his crashand the one that killed his youngerbrother.

If you dont wear it and you getcaught up like I did, youre going topay hard. And it might inflict yourwhole family, Alex said. You dontwant that to happen.

The last three months of2012 were a typically dead-

ly period for the Roanoke

region, with at least 23 peo-

ple dying in traffic crashes,

according to Roanoke Times

reports.

Police said 11 were wear-

ing seat belts. One person

had been aboard a motor-

cycle where no belt is avail-

able. But 11 were in vehicles

and not wearing a seat belt.

That fits the national

profile for highway deaths,

which shows that about half

of the people killed in pas-

senger vehicle crashes had

failed to belt up.

The list of deceased who

had lived in the Roanoke

area, or who perished there all in crashes where they

werent using a seat belt

grew longer in the fourth

quarter of 2012:

n On Oct. 7, 15-year-old

Allen Dickenson died in the

median of a highway near his

Bedford County home after

he was ejected in a crash.

n A week later, Dicken-

sons 15-year-old Liberty

High School classmate, Han-

nah Long of Bedford County,

died in a Franklin County

wreck.

n Two and a half weeks

after Long died, Rufus

Sonny McGill, 19, of Roa-

noke, the driver of the car

Long was in, died, too.

n A few days later, MarkLowell Wishon, 29, of Camp-

bell County, flipped his pick-

up truck in eastern Bedford

County and died.

n Ten days after that,

Jean Divers, 39, of Wirtz,

crashed into a school bus in

Roanoke County. She died

instantly.

nKatie Thurston, 16, who

had a Vinton mailing address,

died the next day in another

Bedford County crash.

n Nearly a week later,

Christopher Garrett, 42, who

was riding with Divers, died

of his injuries.

n Two days later, Quinn

Asher, 28, of Christiansburg,

an engineering student at

Virginia Tech, died in a wreckon Interstate 81 in Washing-

ton County.

n About three weeks

later, Larry Heaton of Henry

County, head of Franklin

Community Bank in Rocky

Mount, drove into a tree

in Patrick County and was

killed.

n Four days after that,

Dale Ridgeway, 60, of Mone-

ta, died in another Bedford

County crash.

nAbout two weeks later,

on Dec. 29, Paul Vaught, 42,

of Pilot, crashed and died in

Montgomery County.

Jeff Sturgeon

A deadlyperiod inSouthwestVirginia

CONTINUED FROM 8

SHATTERED DREAMS

Allen Dickensons parents haveonly photographs and memoriesof their son, who was ejectedfrom the vehicle in which he wasa passenger when it crashed.Billy Dickenson says his son wasenamored with cars, and withdriving. He had already detailedhis ambitions of becoming adiesel mechanic in the militaryand returning home to workon cars. Every time we wentsomewhere he wanted to drive,Billy says.

Photo courtesy Dickenson family

You cantell from thespider webson the front

windshield.And thoseare theones whosurvive. Agood numberof them areejected fromthe vehicle.

Lane Perry,

Henry Countys sheriff

Need proof that seat belts work?

Two college students from New York were driv-ing through rural Virginia on an interstate highway,

both belted, when one developed a headache, accord-ing to a report by the Transportation Safety TrainingCenter at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Same car, same crash, different endingcontrol of her Mitsubishi Monteroand the vehicle drifted into the cen-ter median, going about 70 mph. Shesteered back to the pavement, butthen jerked the wheel to the left inan overcorrection. The SUV entereda series of sideways rolls, accordingto the report.

Here the two womens storiesdiverged.

The still-unbelted passenger waslifted off her seat and thrown around

inside the vehicle, the report said.

The rolling action forced her out thepassenger window ahead of the car,where she was hit and tumbled overgrass and rock for more than 50 feetbeyond where the car stopped. Shewas dead when found.

Still inside, the driver had onlybruising from her seat belt. Thereport said she was checked at ahospital and released after 90 min-utes.

Jeff Sturgeon

The 18-year-old driver asked foribuprofen. The 20-year-old pas-

senger unbuckled and retrieved the

medication from the back seat. Dur-ing the moment the driver glanced

down to pick up the pills, she lost

MAKING IT CLICKL I VES O N TH E L I N E

1959: Swedish automaker Volvo

releases the rst vehicle in history

with a 3-point seat belt standard.

Located in the front seat only, it

anchored the user to the frame at

each hip and one shoulder. The belt

came with the Volvo 122 sedan,

known as the Amazon in Sweden. A

major improvement in safety com-

pared with lap-only belts that were

already available from such makers

as Ford, the Volvo 3-point belt set

todays standard for seat belts. The

company shared the design with

competitors.

1968: Three-point belts required in

the front seats of new cars sold in

the United States, except convert-

ibles.

1973: The emergency locking

retractor, which locks the shoulder

belt instantly when a vehicle stops

or rolls, becomes a required acces-

sory with seat belts

1983: In response to low seat belt

use, federal ofcials mandate that

automakers must install either

automatic seat belts or air bags

in new vehicles sold in the United

States. Several years before the

deadline, automatic seat belts were

available in

some vehicles.

Most afxed

the shoulder

belt automati-

cally but left

the occupant

to manually

buckle the lap

belt. But the auto-functioning belts

were unpopular. Manufacturers later

dropped them for the air bag, which

complements the protection of a

seat belt. Air bags were required inpassenger vehicles by 1997.

1984: New York adopts nations

rst state seat belt law.

1988: Virginia passes the states

rst seat belt law. After multiple

amendments, the law currently

requires a belt be worn by all drivers

regardless of age and by any adult

18 and older riding in the front seat

as a passenger. The law requires a

seat belt or child safety seat for all

persons younger than 18 without

regard to seat position. Enforcement

of the adult provision is secondary

or contingent on another viola-

tion such as speeding or reckless

driving rst being committed in the

presence of an ofcer. Enforcement

of the child provisions is primary,meaning an ofcer can stop a driver

upon seeing unsecured children.

1990: Although seat belts were

common in the front seat, it was

not until 1990 that lap and shoul-

der belts were required in the rear

seats of new cars sold in the United

States. The requirement takes effect

for pickups, passenger vans and

SUVs two years later. The require-

ment for a 3-point belt in the middle

rear seat is phased in between 2005and 2007.

1995: Maine becomes the 49th

state to pass a

seat belt law,

leaving only

New Hamp-

shire, which

still does not

have a belt

law.

2009: Three-

point seat belt

turns 50 years

old. British

trafc authorities estimate use of

the belt has saved 1 million lives

worldwide.

2011: Rhode Island becomes the

latest state to make enforcement of

its seat belt law primary.

SOURCES: National Highway Trafc Saety

Administration, Insurance Institute or

Highway Saety, Virginia Department o

Motor Vehicles, Code o Virginia, other.

By 1940 in Virginia, motor vehicles had displaced horse-drawn

equipment on the states roads to a large degree, but driving was

still new. Only 15 percent of road mileage was paved; the rest was

dirt or gravel. Many vehicles did not have seat belts, crashes were

common, and seat belt laws were decades off. Europe led the

way to greater safety.

Nils Bohlin from Sweden invented the three-

point safety belt while working for Volvo.

BUCKLE UP VIRGINIA? NOT ALWAYS.

THE ROANOKE TIMES 9February 24, 2013