Entirely Avoidable Deaths

The car crash that should have been minor

Driving back from the Kotel on Yom Yerushalayim last Friday, I saw that there had been a traffic accident on Route 1. It didn’t seem to be a particularly terrible crash. A car had hit the back of a bus, and the front of the car was a little crumpled. But it was strange. The bus was parked on the shoulder - how had the car driven straight into the back of it? And the amount of emergency services present indicated that the situation was much worse than it appeared.

And indeed that was tragically the case. It turned out that a baby had died instantly, the mother was critically injured and just passed away yesterday, and the father and the driver were both badly injured.

How had such a terrible result happened from a relatively minor accident? The answer is that nobody was buckled in. Including the baby.

When I found that out, at first I couldn’t understand it. Who on earth drives - on the highway, and with a baby - without using seatbelts? It’s a basic law, it’s so easy, and it’s so obviously important from a safety perspective!

I then suspected what the answer was, and upon learning more, I saw that I was correct. There was an explanation as to how the driver was driving so badly that he squarely went into the back of a bus that was on the shoulder, and it was the same explanation for why nobody was buckled in.