Hey there! I hope yall have been enjoying summer as much as me! I am lovin it! Livin it up! But it really is going by way way too fast. We go back to school on THE 5th! OF AUGUST! Me and Rachel Box get back like the 2nd! Wow!! Its gonna be HECTIC! We gonna have to do all our shopping before we go to NYC... ughh...
And another thing is coming up!!! THE FOURTH OF JULY!!! Woo! I love the 4th. For some reason...AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT IS???.....
FIREWORKS!!!
For our trip, me and Rachel are going to be running a TNT tent! It's gonna be a lot of fun, but a lot of work... You should come on out! Its on Hwy 51, just south of Goodman Road, next to "Catfish Salmon" which is just next to the Dealers Auto Auction. Invite all your friends, we really need the support!! :)) This trip means alot and me and Box have been working our butts off for the money to go. We are so excited!
Continue to pray for us and the trip, we'd really appreciate it.
Now...On a more serious note...me and Rach also have some bad news.
Our really good friend's little brother died in a car accident. He was only eight years old. It was devastating. We felt so bad. I just want to tell everyone out there to be EXXTRAAA CAREFUL on the road. You never think that anything bad like tht could ever happen to you and then all of a sudden, and it does.
ALWAYS WEAR A SEATBELT, FOLLOW THE SPEED LIMIT, && THE RULES OF THE ROAD. DONT TEXT, TALK ON THE PHONE WHILE DRIVING AND NEVER NEVER EVER DRINK AND DRIVE.
Here are some statistics on car accidents in the United States:
- On an average, there are more than 6 million car accidents on the roads of the US, annually.
- More than 3 million people get injured due to car accidents, with more than 2 million of these injuries being permanent.
- There are in excess of 40,000 deaths due to car accidents every year.
- More than 25% of all car drivers were involved in car accidents in a five year period.
- Every 12 minutes, one person dies because of a car accident. Every 14 seconds, a car accident results in an injured victim.
- According to the CDC in 2008, 4,767 teenagers died from fatal car crash injuries.
- The majority of car accidents could be avoided if only the drivers would drive more responsibly.
- About 40% of car accident fatalities occur because of a drunken driver.
- About 30% of the car accident fatalities can be attributed to driving above the speed limits and
- 33% and above because of reckless driving that causes the car to go off the road and result in an accident.
- In more than half of all car accident fatalities, the deceased were found not to be wearing their seat belts at the time of the crash.
- Failure to wear a seat belt contributes to more fatalities than any other single traffic safety-related behavior. 63% of people killed in accidents are not wearing seat belts. Wearing a seat belt use is still the single most effective thing we can do to save lives and reduce injuries on America's roadways.
- Seat belts are the most effective safety devices in vehicles today, estimated to save 9,500 lives each year. Yet only 68 percent of the motor vehicle occupants are buckled. In 1996, more than 60 percent of the occupants killed in fatal crashes were unrestrained.
If 90 percent of Americans buckle up, we will prevent more than 5,500 deaths and 132,000 injuries annually.- Twenty-eight percent of traffic accidents occur when people talk on cellphones or send text messages while driving.
- The vast majority of those crashes, 1.4 million annually, are caused by cellphone conversations, and 200,000 are blamed on text messaging.
- There are about 17,000 alcohol related car accident deaths in the United States each year, this means that there is a drunk driving death every 31 minutes.
- 248,000 people are injured in accidents where police reported that alcohol was present, thus one person is injured in a drunk driving accident in the US every 2 minutes.
- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration notes twenty-three percent of teenage drivers in fatal car wrecks possessed a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit of .08.
- Forty percent of deaths for persons aged 15 to 20 stem from automobile collisions according to the CDC.
Now I know you are like RACHEL I get it! But I mean don't these open your eyes?! WOW! This is crazy. Just two days ago my mom and me got pulled over because I didn't have my seatbelt on. We got a ticket for $140 dollars. If I would have buckled up that wouldn't have happened. This is an important issue I hope you understand how important it really is...
DRIVE SAFE,
Rachel Combs