making it click: day 3 part 1
TRANSCRIPT
-
7/29/2019 Making It Click: Day 3 Part 1
1/1
ROANOKE, VIRGINIA $1.00TUESDAY FEBRUARY 26, 2013
Learning the hard way
Young drivers and passengers know the facts,
hear tragic stories and compete in lively safety contests.
But teens riding without seat belts still die in crashes.
REBECCA BARNETT | The Roanoke Times
After installing a sign promoting traffic safety in the front of Staunton River High School, senior Brandon Settles and fellow students, allmembers of the teen advocacy group Youth Of Virginia Speak Out About Traffic Safety, sign the post to show their commitment to safety.
Derailing 140 jobs, Norfolk SouthernCorp. is ending regional rail car sortingat its Roanoke hump yard, an operationthat railroad experts estimate is about100 years old.
The railroad said the changesannounced Monday will bring greaterefficiency by phasing out a poorly laid-out facility in a non-prime location.
The plan will trim about 7 percentof the companys regional work force of1,870 by eliminating train carmen, whoinspect and repair rail cars; train crews,who conduct switching operations in theyard; and track maintenance personnel.The company said the workers couldapply for other positions at NS.
The hump will stay open for the ben-efit of local train customers, but its daysas a regional railroad pivot point will endduring the next several days, the railroadsaid. Somewhat fewer trains will pass
WASHINGTON After more than a
century, the U.S. Census Bureau is drop-ping its use of the word Negro to describeblack Americans in surveys.
Instead of the term that came into useduring the Jim Crow era of racial segrega-tion, census forms will use the more mod-ern labels black or African-American.
The change will take effect next yearwhen the Census Bureau distributes itsannual American Community Survey tomore than 3.5 million U.S. households,Nicholas Jones, chief of the bureaus racialstatistics branch, said in an interview.
He pointed to months of public feed-back and census research that concludedfew black Americans still identify withbeing Negro and many view the term asoffensive and outdated.
This is a reflection of changing times,changing vocabularies and changingunderstandings of what race means in
this country, said Matthew Snipp, a soci-ology professor at Stanford University,
NS scraps140 jobsat citysrail yard
U.S. censusplanning todrop use ofterm Negro
See RAILROAD, 6
See CENSUS, 6
By Jeff [email protected]
381-1661
By Hope Yen
Associated Press
The plan to eliminate thehump yard will reduce NorfolkSoutherns regional work force byabout 7 percent.
The word will be replaced withthe more modern labels blackor African-American.
KYLE GREEN | The Roanoke Times
Ron Long holds a picture of his daughter Hannah at his home in Bedford County.Hannah, 15, was killed in an October crash in Franklin County. Despite award-winningefforts by Liberty High School to promote teen traffic safety, Hannah had not heededthe message to buckle up the night the Cadillac she was riding in slammed into a tree.
MAKING IT CLICKL I VES O N TH E L I N E
Teachings on t ransportation safetybegin in the wee stages of elementaryeducation, when kindergarten teachersfirst present the concept of being safe.
Tie your shoe-laces, they tellstudents. Wearyour bike helmetand buckle yourseat belt. Its inVirginias Stan-
dards of Learn-ing.
Schoolsrepeat the mes-sage about seatbelts as studentsadvance. Its cov-ered again dur-ing driver educa-tion, underlinedin teen-safetycontests at highschools and maybe reinforced athome by parents.
By the timetheyre teenagers, many are on their wayto a lifelong habit of buckling up.
However, young people riding with-out seat belts continue to perish in crash-es.
Liberty High School in Bedford Coun-ty, which has an award-winning teen traf-fic safety club, lost two students in traf-fic crashes during a seat belt-awareness
campaign in October.Neither Hannah Long nor Allen Dick-
enson, who died a week apart, was buck-led in.
Theres no way they couldnt haveheard some of the messages, said MaryKing, who directs the statewide teenorganization Yovaso, Youth Of Virginia
Speak Out About Traffic Safety, whichis sponsored by the Virginia State PoliceAssociation.
Recent deaths, she said, are kind of
fuel for us to keep going on the campaignfor seat belts and sobriety, compliancewith speed limits and an end to distracteddriving.
Longs father, 53-year-old Ron Long,speaks to students about the consequenc-es of his daughters decision to go social-izing with friends and not wear a seat belt.
Id like to not see anybody ever gethurt like this again, Long said.
By Jeff Sturgeon
See LEARNING, 14
THIRD OFTHREE PARTS
Sunday: Seat beltsoften skipped onrural Va. roads
Monday: Va. is oneof 18 states withouta primary seat beltlaw; Christiansburgmakes belts a cause
Online: Visitroanoke.comto leave yourcomments, watchvideo, read previouscoverage and vote intodays poll.
Bridge - Classifed 7 | Comics - Extra 4 | Crossword - Extra 5 | Lottery - News 8 | Obituaries - News 11 | TV Listings - Extra 2 | Classifed - Sports 56 5
45527 08554
Former surgeon generaltook high-prole stances
C. Everett Koop, who raised the profle
o the nations surgeon general by
speaking rankly about AIDS and the
dangers o smoking, has died in New
Hampshire. He was 96. PAGE 10
Teamwork neededon judge vacancies
State legislators rom
Western Virginia must join
together and ask Gov. Bob
McDonnell to fll judicial
vacancies. PAGE 13
Roanoke New River
40HIGH LOW
37HIGH LOW
38 34
WEATHER
MORE TOP STORIES IN NEWS
Crucial seconds on alocal highway bridge
Danny Crouse decided on a
career change fve years ago.
Now, he has been chosen
Salems police ofcer o the
year. PAGE 8
COOL TEMPS
HOT BOOTS extra
2013FOOTBALL
SCHEDULES
sports
lOBITUARIES