June 6th is National Yo-Yo Day. When I was eleven I became obsessed with yo-yos. But when you get older you realize you can have a yo-yo, and you can have a girlfriend, but you can’t have both at the same time. You’re probably wondering about a connection between yo-yos and traffic safety. June 6th is not only National Yo-Yo Day; it’s also national Secure Your Load Day.
Do we really need a day dedicated to securing your load? A better question would be, do we really need National Yo-Yo Day or Applesauce Cake Day (also on June 6th)? Yo-yos and applesauce cake are kind of silly things to celebrate, but making sure that whatever you have in your pickup bed or trailer is properly strapped down and secure can save a life.
Most of us probably don’t think about the possibility of permanently altering someone’s life when we pick up a few 2x4s from the lumber yard. That’s the point of Secure Your Load Day. We should be thinking about that each time we load up a truck or trailer. Specifically, here are a few questions to ask yourself before you drive off with the stuff you’ve loaded up:
- Have I overloaded my vehicle or trailer?
- Have I tied large objects directly to the vehicle?
- Is the entire load secured at the back sides and top?
- Is there any chance something might fall or blow out of my vehicle?
- What would happen to my load if I hit a bump or had to brake suddenly?
- Would I feel safe driving behind my secured load?
Secure Your Load Day has its roots here in Washington. In 2004 Robin Abel’s daughter Maria was nearly killed by a piece of particle board that flew off a trailer and through her windshield. Since then, Robin has worked to create awareness and change laws so that other families don’t have to experience what she and her daughter went through.
Prior to Robin’s efforts, if a driver’s unsecured load injured or killed someone, the consequence in the law was limited to a civil infraction (similar to a ticket for speeding or not wearing a seatbelt.) With our current law, seriously harming someone because something from your vehicle escaped and struck someone else is one of a handful of traffic violations that’s actually a crime. That puts injuring someone because of an unsecured load up there with impaired driving – both are gross misdemeanors. If your unsecured load causes property damage, it’s a misdemeanor. As a quick civics refresher, one big difference between an infraction and a crime is that you can go to jail for a crime.
I’ve mentioned Robin and Maria’s story, but their experience is not an isolated one. In a review of crashes in 2016, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that there were 683 deaths, nearly 20,000 injuries and over 90,000 incidents related to unsecured loads. Even though many drivers properly secure their loads, it’s clear that too many don’t. Secure Your Load Day is an opportunity to remind everyone how important it is.
When we hear about what happened to Maria, the tendency is to think of it as a freak accident, like getting struck with lightning or attacked by a shark. Really though, they’re predictable (anything that’s not secured can fly out) and preventable (properly strapping things down keeps them from flying out). It’s simple actually. We just need to think about it and take a couple extra minutes to do it right. To quote Robin, “Secure your load as if everyone you loved were in a car behind you.”