My Own Son Didn't Listen

AS A FLIGHT NURSE EMPLOYED BY A HOSPITAL-BASED aeromedical helicopter service, I regularly respond to life-and-death situations. For 18 years I have flown to the scenes of some of the most terrible crashes you can imagine. But nothing in my experience or my training prepared me for what happened on this past Mother's Day weekend.

I was on duty when we received a request to respond to a head-on collision approximately 30 miles from Tulsa, Okla. En route to the scene it was reported by our communication center that this was a mass-casualty incident involving several vehicles. As we observed the scene from the air, we could see many victims lying on the highway and by the roadside. We hoped none had been ejected from their vehicles.

When we arrived, our crew was directed to an area where many of the victims were being stabilized. My partner and I were asked to assist with a young man who was in serious trouble. As I stepped into the ambulance I could see that he was already receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation. As I moved in to help, I suddenly froze. I recognized the young man's shoes. They belonged to my 17-year-old son, Nik. In seconds my whole world crashed in around me. Nik was so gravely injured, I knew he was not going to survive.

Three of the four teenagers in the vehicle Nik was riding in were not wearing their seat belts. Two of the three unbelted passengers were killed: the driver and my son, who was in the back seat. The other unbelted back-seat passenger was ejected and seriously injured. The front-seat passenger, the only one wearing his seat belt, walked away with minor cuts and bruises.

I lost my son on Mother's Day weekend because he was not wearing his seat belt. Our family--and the families of more than 9,000 sons, daughters, mothers and fathers who will die this year because they were unbelted--will never be the same.

It is not just the families who suffer. The community pays a price as well. Those of us who buckle up are paying in higher health-care and insurance costs for those who don't. The hospital costs for treating unbelted crash victims are 50 percent higher than those for belted crash victims. And 85 percent of those inpatient costs are paid by society, not by the individual. Any way you look at it--the loss of human life or the financial strain on society--the results are catastrophic.