By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
On the morning of Dec. 12, 2023 John and Judy Maxey were headed north on Route 25, approaching Sugar Ridge Road.
A work crew was in the right lane.
Mr. Maxey, who was driving, slowed and maneuvered around the work area, then a driver headed south cut in front of them to turn onto Sugar Ridge,
Maxey’s Ford F150 struck the Ford Escape, sheering off its front end. Then the Maxeys’ truck went off the road, narrowly missing two trees, a telephone pole and culvert. It flipped on its roof.
The first person to approach them after the crash, said he expected to find them dead. They were hanging upside down in the car, waiting for help. They lived to tell the tale.
And an important part of that story is that they were wearing their seatbelts.They were injured. He had broken his neck and five vertebrae. Mrs. Maxey, 74. had broken ribs, sternum and scapula.
“We were black and blue and sore,” Mr. Maxey, 75, said. And he still has limited range of motion in his neck. But they lived.
“We’re in the latter part of our life but didn’t want it to end that way,” he said. Not with grandchildren including a four-month-old.
The Maxeys met with the press at the Bowling Green highway patrol post Tuesday to promote the use of seatbelts.
Post commander Lt. Matthew Geer said troopers often come upon serious crashes where they say it was lucky the occupants had on seat belts. Geer said he’s never responded to a crash where he thinks it would have been better if someone had not buckled up.
It’s easy to do, and it’s the best protection. Yet, said Sandy Wiechman of the Safe Communities of Wood County, the numbers are going in the wrong direction.
The county has had 17 fatal crashes this year already, five more than at this time last year. and last year saw an increase.
[RELATED: Fatal crashes in Wood County spiked in 2023]
Of those fatalities, she said, seven were not wearing safety belts.
Statewide the Highway Patrol reports that from 2019 to 2023, 2,554 people were killed on Ohio roads in crashes in which safety belts were available but not in use. In 2023, 61 percent of the fatalities were in cases where seatbelts were available and not used, the fourth year in a row that rate topped 60 percent.
People will make adjustments to override car systems that warn them they are not buckled in.
Staff Lt. Scott Wyckhouse, of the Findlay Post, said one driver had a pin jammed into the belt. When the driver went left of center and collided head on with a commercial vehicle, he went flying through his windshield.
Not wearing a safety belt is a secondary offense in Ohio, so a driver cannot be pulled over simply for not being buckled in but can be ticketed if they have been stopped for another offense.
The state patrol, Geer said, would like that to change, so not wearing a seat belt is a primary offense.
Neighboring states which have not using a seat belt as a primary offense have higher usage and fewer citations. Since 2019, the state patrol has issued more than 350,000 tickets for the offense.
Asked about the extent that distracted driving was playing into the problem, Wiechman said they are trying to reshape that message. Too many people think distracted driving only means looking at a cell phone, but it can be any number of distractions, including just thinking about what the driver needs from the store or sightseeing.
And vehicles, while equipped with all manner of safe technologies, also are equipped with distracting technology.
In the end, she said the driver is the one in control of the vehicle.
Distracted driving is a problem. But Geer noted it’s hard to prove, and if it results in a crash then wearing a safety belt is the best protection from it causing serious injury or death.
Wiechman is concerned, though, that the youngest drivers are ignoring the message about buckling up.
All this concerns John and Judy Maxey. They have a granddaughter who is 16 and ready to get her license and two grandsons who are right behind them.
They hope that they like others heed the message on their new plates: “Save by the Belt.”
