Dressed festively wearing her red sweater and Santa necklace, Mary heads out to her beloved senior center’s annual Christmas party. It is a gray and foggy day in the Pacific Northwest, but it doesn’t dim her spirits. She loads her gift and bag in the car and sets out driving a route she has taken hundreds of times.
A block from her house, she pulls out in front of another car and is hit on the driver’s side of her car. She is rushed to the hospital where she dies a week later due to complications from her injuries.
Mary never saw the other car. As I said, it was a gray and foggy day, but the other driver did not have their headlights on.
RCW 46.37.020 in part states when lighted lamps and signaling devices are required.
“Every vehicle upon a highway within this state at any time from a half hour after sunset to a half hour before sunrise and at any other time when, due to insufficient light or unfavorable atmospheric conditions, persons and vehicles on the highway are not clearly discernible at a distance of one thousand feet ahead shall display lighted headlights, other lights, and illuminating devices.”
I cringe every time I see a shadow moving down the road, then see that it is a car without lights on. It reminds me every time of the loss of my mother. I do wonder, especially when I am driving in those conditions and it is difficult to see other cars without their headlights on, whether my mother might have seen the other car if it had its lights on and avoided the accident altogether. We will never know.
I urge you to please be aware of driving conditions and turn on your headlights when it is difficult to see. Do it for Mary and everyone else on the road including yourself.
Judie Fink
Centralia
