[B’ Spokes: What bothers me in too many of our local stories is no mention of the driver tried to stop and avoid hitting the pedestrian as that is a legal obligation in Maryland.]
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Distraction and tragedy
Lives changed forever, needlessly
By Erika Stutzman
T he National Safety Council estimates that at least 1.6 million vehicle crashes — 28 percent of the total — are caused each year by drivers using cellphones or texting. Some of these crashes are fatal.
So it`s not shocking, at least statistically, that a woman was sentenced this week for careless driving in a fatal accident in Boulder during the very month called National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.
Kathryn Wulliman, 28, hit and killed pedestrian Dorothy Hoffins, 85 as Hoffins crossed Lookout Road in Gunbarrel last summer. Wulliman said she didn`t see Hoffins, who didn`t cross in a cross walk or with the benefit of stopped or slowed traffic. Wulliman explained she was entering information in to her windshield-mounted GPS device at the time. She was fined and sentenced to 240 hours of community service, which of course sounds like a light sentence, but nonetheless reflects the late woman`s choice to make a treacherous crossing.
Texting while driving is illegal in Colorado. The text of the law applies not just to text messages, but "other similar forms of manual data entry or transmission."
There`s no reason not to take the driver at her word: She said she never saw the pedestrian at all. And since common sense tells us that most drivers aren`t driving around looking for pedestrians to kill, it rings true.
The family members didn`t want the driver to get jail time, which is compassionate, and the defense attorney did his job by pointing out Hoffins should not have crossed the street the way that she did.
But it should be repeated time, and time again, that if Wulliman had pulled over at some point — into the strip mall lot farther west, the gas station, into any of the neighborhood side streets or parking lots that dot the road — she could have entered her GPS data at a full stop. Continuing on her way, she may have been surprised or even alarmed to see a pedestrian walking across a busy, fast-paced street where there is no crosswalk, but she would have seen her. Hoffins` friends and family members wouldn`t have suffered such a horrendous loss, and Wulliman wouldn`t have to live the rest of her life knowing that she killed a fellow human being with her car.
https://www.dailycamera.com/ci_17829020oldId.20110414101651900
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