I’ve been at this blog for nearly four years, posting articles and photos. A few weeks ago, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center approached my family about making a video about Reid’s story, for teen drivers and their parents. The link, released today, is below. Now I have a short video that masterfully tells the story and conveys the central messages. Our family’s thanks to Kevin Borrup of Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and Paula Fahy Ostop and her colleagues at Go-Media for their great work, and to Kohl’s for their financial support.

A friend of mine, a mother of four boys, sent along this article from a newspaper in Marshfield, Massachusetts, where she grew up. It was written by the Police Chief of Marshfield, and provides an eloquent and powerful reminder of the consequences of bad teen driver decisions and the need for vigilance among parents and supervising adults as we enter prom season and the four most dangerous months of the year for young drivers.

PHILLIP TAVARES: Dreading the knock on the door late at night

Last Wednesday, May 8, I had the privilege to attend the U.S. launch of Global Youth Traffic Safety Month, organized by the National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS). An inspirational day it was, on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial (with weather that threatened but at the last minute cooperated): remarks from US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, NHTSA Administrator David Strickland, Dr. Tom Frieden of the Center for Disease Control, Chairman Debra Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board, and former Secretary of Transportation (and current President of the Road Safety Foundation) Norman Mineta. Each speaker put the more than 34,000 annual deaths on American roads in the context of the 1.2 million lives that are lost around the world each year in traffic crashes. Each speaker emphasized the preventability of crashes and the incalculable loss of life, but noted that twenty years ago, the cause of getting the American public to wear seat belts seemed like a daunting and uphill battle, but we have made great strides there and we can do the same with crashes, injuries, and fatalities. Their remarks were overhung by an air of urgency, based on the fact, announced two days before the event, that traffic fatalities in the U.S. rose in 2012 over 2011 after several years of decline.

After the Jefferson Memorial event, about two hundred of us participated in a Long Short Walk, which I have written about in recent posts. Recall that the Long Short Walk originated with the family on Nelson Mandela, whose great granddaughter Zenani , a pedestrian, was killed in a crash in South Africa in 2010. At the event and on the walk we were joined by Kweku Mandela, Nelson’s grandson and Zenani’s cousin.

Below are photos of me with Secretary Mineta and with Kweku Mandela. It was an honor to meet them and to be inspired by their efforts to make our roads safer throughout the world.

As explained here a few weeks ago, the Road Safety Foundation has been organizing an international traffic and pedestrian safety campaign called The Long Short Walk. The campaign originated with the family of Nelson Mandela, whose great granddaughter was killed in a crash in 2010. (Mandela’s memoir is called The Long Short Walk To Freedom, hence the campaign name.) On the weekend of April 27-28, the extended Hollister family, in three separate runs/walks, was proud to join in this worthy event, captured in these photos (click on them to display them in full-screen):