No more important challenge exists than finding ways to improve the safety of everyone while riding in motor vehicles. This occupant suffered permanent brain damage.

There are human tragedies behind road crash statistics. Here is an example.

It has been almost a year now since my life was turned upside down, literally and figuratively. And it will be a long time until I forget my boyfriend and the two good friends who were in the car with me that cold December night. We were returning from a night of partying. My boy friend Matt was driving and with him up front was my friend Kyle. I was in the back seat with my other friend Jeremy. Yes, we were speeding and drinking - a lot of things we shouldn't have been doing that night. The most important thing we didn't do though was buckle up.

As we came over a hill going extremely fast, I knew this was going to be it. Jeremy and I were holding hands and he said to me, "I love you, you're my sweetheart." And, in that instant, I made a decision that saved my life - / buckled my safety belt. I don't know exactly what made me do it, but I was the only one of us who did.

Matt lost control of the car and we started rolling, over and over again. When the car finally came to a stop I unbuckled myself. I was alone in the car and the engine was still running. I reached up and turned the car off and discovered we had plowed into a ditch in a frozen field on the side of the road. Out in the field I saw my boyfriend Matt. He was lying there like he was sleeping, but he wasn't. I called to him, but he didn't answer. I walked over and knelt beside his head and lifted it up into my hands - / could feel Matt's life pouring away. His blood and brains collected in a pool in my palms. He was gone.

My friend Jeremy was nearby - his neck was broken. It was broken so badly it was tucked underneath his body. And finally there was Kyle, laying there covered in his own blood - gurgling in it. His eyes opened and he was staring straight at me. I put my coat over him and told him to hang on while I got help. But he wouldn't make it either. Strangely, in the midst of this horrific scene, I noticed that Kyle's shoes were no longer on. They had been literally ripped off his feet by the violence of the crash. That was something that really bothered me - one of those flashbulb images you never forget. I ran to a nearby farmhouse covered in my friends' blood and called 911. But there was nothing they could do. Matt and Jeremy both died instantly - Kyle passed away soon after that at the hospital. There were three funerals that week, one after the other. A 17 year-old kid shouldn't have to be planning her boyfriend's funeral - but I did. We were together for five years. The sound of that crash will be with me a lot longer though.

When I tell this story to kids my age, I wish they could get inside my head for just one moment - just one sleepless night when the nightmares come, the nightmare that was the last time I saw my friends alive. If they could get inside my head they'd understand how terribly much I just want to go back and live that night again and make them buckle in those last moments - before the car rolled and everything went black. But I can't go back.

But there are hundreds of people out there - a lot of them just kids that still have a chance to change their fate. They don't have to end up in a ditch bleeding and gasping for their last breaths. I have to live with the memory of seeing my friends like that for the rest of my life. There's not a day that there are still a lot of questions I need to answer for myself but I come to the realization that the best I can do is live as an example for other kids like me. Kids my age don't like to hear what's good for them, but I'm trying. I'm thinking that maybe if they see me and hear me out that they'll think twice before going for a drive without putting their safety belt on.

Taken from Mary Reinhart's speech before the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services - Statewide Trauma Care System Forum, September 2003.