I recently attended court in Tyrone as an eyewitness to the accident on July 4 which nearly claimed my son’s life.
The person who was driving the vehicle which struck my son’s vehicle was fined $110 for “Following too closely.” Case closed. See ya later.
But I started at the end so let me begin at the beginning. On July 4th of this year I was travelling north on Ga. Highway 74, my 18-year-old son following me in a second vehicle.
Just prior to Dogwood Church, the road curves gently and I watched in my rearview mirror as a red Camaro overtaking us in the fast lane failed to negotiate the curve and ran into the back of the truck my son was driving.
The car actually went underneath the back end of my son’s truck and the driver must have jerked the wheel left.
I saw my son’s vehicle pivot to the right, depart the road and begin rolling violently, flipping many times onto its roof and coming to rest on the roof.
The entire sequence from collision to Armageddon was a matter of seconds but was so violent I did not think it survivable. As I stopped and backed to the scene I fully expected to find my son’s lifeless body in the truck.
There is a line from a WWI poem which comes close to describing my horror: “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight …” Wilfred Owen was describing the victim of a gas attack, but I relive that tumbling violent spectacle as if in a dream.
By the time I had backed to the truck lying on its roof, my son was already emerging from one of the shattered windows, bloody but alive. People stopped and helped. A real angel whose name I do not know attended him as I could not with my overflowing adrenaline.
The Tyrone Police quickly arrived on the scene as did the ambulance. I spoke with the officer relating my eyewitness account and pointing out other witnesses and left with the ambulance, confident the police would properly prosecute this careless person. My son was lacerated and bruised but alive.
Now we come to the part that’s grim and the part any regular law-abiding taxpaying citizen should be most horrified to learn.
I obtained a copy of the “Georgia Uniform Motor Vehicle Accident Report.” To interpret this report you have to go online to see what the numbers mean. Under “Contributing Factors” the officer had placed a “3” for “following too closely.”
Looking at the list of possible infractions, he could have cited her for “Inattentive” (#28), “Distracted” (#25), Exceeding the speed limit (#5 — both my son and I were traveling at no more than the speed limit and this driver rapidly caught us), or improper lane change (#11).
I queried him as to why he did not cite her for any of the others and why he would not pursue a reckless driving charge. I wondered why he had listed no witnesses. I wondered why he hadn’t recorded the other driver’s date of birth and driver’s license number. I wondered why the accident was reported on a straight road instead of a curve.
I wondered why the accident report in no way matched the accident.
All I could figure from his answers is that “Following too closely” is kind of the standard and pretty easy to prove. The driver had admitted to fiddling with the T-top on her car immediately prior to the crash, but that didn’t make much of an impression either.
I spoke with the officer a couple times after the accident, but he was adamant that this was the only charge for which he could cite this driver. Reckless driving he said, almost has to be witnessed by the cop.
I spoke with the chief of police who naturally supported his investigator in the field. I spoke with the solicitor but understand that she must rely on these same police for their evidence.
I do not think the police in Tyrone are bad people or incompetent people. I believe they are poorly led. Rudolph Giuliani cleaned up New York by demanding the police do the hard things; that they enforce all the laws, not just the big ones or the easy ones.
It is very easy to sit on the side of Hwy. 74 and hand out speeding tickets. Those tickets are easily proven in court and very expensive.
It’s a lot harder to gather evidence, interview witnesses, and pursue proper charges against a driver whose negligence ALMOST but did not in fact kill anyone.
Does it not strike anyone as ironic that the reason for the speed limit is to lessen the chance of the very thing happening which almost killed my son, yet the perpetrator is let off with less of a fine than if she had been caught speeding?
And the only reason for this disparity is the unwillingness of the police to gather evidence to prove the greater infraction.
Which all leads me to believe that this is the standard set for and expected of the Tyrone Police Department by their chief of police.
If this is true, it is manifest every day and the justice I thought due my son is not the only casualty.
So I have some advice for a Tyrone police chief who probably doesn’t want any:
Command is lonely and discipline not popular. Your command’s lack of discipline is a danger to your community and to all those who pass through your community.
Apparently your department is acting solely as a revenue collection agency and you are sending the message to offenders that you are unwilling to work hard to protect the public.
You are telling the aggrieved that their present and future safety matters little. Your command is falsely attributing accidents in reports which comprise the statistics which lead to safer roads.
You aren’t earning your pay, and you should be ashamed.
Timothy J. Parker
Peachtree City, Ga.
