Negligent drivers can kill and maim. Having family in Greenfield and vicinity, I read the Greenfield Recorder news article: “Bus driver charged with involuntary manslaughter for crash that killed five, including Greenfield family of four” (May 30). My heart goes out to the family of the victims of that crash. It is appalling that a bus driver committed such reckless driving, and even worse, he endangered his life and snuffed out the lives of an innocent family, whose lives he cannot restore.
I can relate to that family’s sorrow in more ways than one. Some years ago, I was a pedestrian walking westward legally crossing a crosswalk in Wichita, Kansas, when a man in a speeding car headed northbound in his car ran the red traffic-light, breaking my left leg and giving me internal injuries. My body was tossed atop his car hood, I hung onto a windshield-washer arm for dear life. That male driver panicked, slammed on his brakes, hurling me off his car hood and onto the pavement of the street, striking my head.
Witnesses got a partial license plate number of his vehicle. An ambulance came for me, taking me one mile to the nearest hospital. What compounds the matter is that my then 80-year-old mother who was safe in my parked car at a store parking lot saw the car hit me. A kind policeman got my Mom out of my car and into his police car and followed my ambulance to the hospital. The hospital gave Mom an empty hospital bed inside my room just a few feet from mine. My broken leg was locked in a leg machine after my surgery where surgeons installed a titanium metal plate and seven surgical screws, which are still inside me to this day. My Mom was OK for a couple days, but one day she sat upright in her hospital bed, her feet on floor. Then, my Mom’s eyes went cross-eyed, she slumped and would have fallen to the floor if it wasn’t for a fast, quick-thinking RN Nurse who caught my Mom.
A gurney was brought in my room. Mom was taken one down to the CAT scan department. About an hour later, a strange doctor came to my room who told me: “James, your mother has had a massive stroke. She will never walk, talk, eat, drink or do anything on her own again.” That doctor was correct. My Mom died about 16 weeks later.
So, thus, I endured a double tragedy. I got permanently maimed and disabled from that awful, reckless, law-breaking man whose recklessness also contributed to my Mom’s tragic sudden stroke and death.
But, the topper… not icing on the cake, but something that added salt to the wounds was to eventually find out the “real job or occupation” of that guy who hit me in the speeding car: He was employed as a public school school bus driver! He cared more about his job than whether I lived or died.
Therefore, my story has some parallels to the story recently relayed in the Recorder about the innocent young family of four slain by a reckless bus driver.
I respectfully implore all readers who are drivers to please “slow down” and “obey” all traffic signs and rules of the road. No job or event is worth reckless speed or inattentive driving. I can barely stand unaided only about a minute. I can shuffle a short distance on a roller or walker. But, mainly, I have to use a wheelchair daily now. I need nurses to give me medicines daily. I have confirmed brain lesions and almost no equilibrium now.
That one reckless act by that man driver upended my world forever. Please think wisely as you drive. The life you save, may be your own.
James A. Marples lives in Longview, Texas and has family in Greenfield and the local area.