easter message

[iCat]

for melbourne members, the herald sun today on page 22-23 has a very poignant piece on road safety written by Senior Constable Brad Cummins.

apologies to those who don't have access to it, but it is the senior constable recounting having to tell family their loved ones have been killed in car accidents.

To all, drive carefully and safely not only this easter but all the time, and may there be much chocolate for all.

[vztrt]

Here's the article

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...000117,00.html

Death knock hard to cop

Sen-Constable Brad Cummins

April 07, 2009 12:00am

THERE are certain times that people dread in their line of work. For police, it is holiday periods such as Easter.

These are the high-risk times on our roads. Speak to any police officer across the state and they can probably tell you a horror story that involves a serious collision.

Traffic management unit police in particular see the worst on our roads.

This Easter will probably be no exception. Though we plan and hope for the best, it is likely a police officer will be knocking on someone's door to deliver bad news. I've done it and there's nothing worse. Two cases particularly stick in my mind.

One night, not long past 10pm, I heard the call on the police radio for available units to attend a collision with the possibility of people trapped in Narre Warren North.

As I was rushing through traffic I received the information no one wants to hear - an ambulance was at the scene and a person had died in the collision.

I arrived and began the investigation; the other patients were still there being treated by ambulance officers.

In the back of my mind was the family of the person who had died. I would have to tell them what happened and, worst of all, that the person they loved would not be coming home ever again.

After I established the basic details of the collision, my primary focus was to identify the victim and then his family.

This task is never as easy as it seems and it certainly wasn't this night. This is the one job you have to get right; you have no margin for error.

I identified the person who was killed in the crash and left the scene. The last address details on his licence did not point us in the direction of a family member.

Finally, after numerous inquiries, we identified an address in Mulgrave.

It was 3am, dark and cold, and I was running it all through my head. What to say? How to break this news? How was the family going to take it?

The address I was going to was the last recorded address of the deceased's daughter. What I didn't know was that it was her birthday.

I stopped the car out the front of her house. I sat in the car for a few minutes discussing the situation with the sergeant. I knew the conversation I was to have with whoever was at this address was going to change their life forever.

I walked up and knocked on the door. I could hear footsteps and saw the lights come on.

The door opened and it was clear I had just got this girl out of bed. I explained to her who I was and, after I confirmed who she was, I asked if we could come inside and sit down. It was at this point the expression on her face changed. She knew something was wrong.

I explained to her that I was investigating a collision that occurred earlier in the evening in which her father was involved. I then explained that as a result of the collision her father had been killed.

The silence was deafening, the look on her face was clear and hollow - this was the shock of what I had to tell her.

People react in many different ways. This girl just couldn't believe that her father was dead.

And, as I found out later, I was standing at her front door telling her that he had died on her birthday.

I could feel all her emotions as she cried. Her reaction that day will be forever etched in my memory.

So too was the time I attended another fatal accident. Police at the scene asked me to notify a family that their daughter had been killed.

I went to the address and, even before I knocked, I remember standing there thinking, "what do I say to these people?"

The dead girl's mother opened the door and the look on her face when she saw me told me that she knew I had nothing good to tell her. I told her that her daughter had been killed in a crash earlier in the morning. With those words I had just changed her life forever. I had destroyed her world.

She told me that her daughter had just got married and was due to go on her honeymoon the following day.

I then drove her to the family home of her new son-in-law. I again stood there knocking on the door. I knew again the news I had to deliver would change lives forever.

I sat down with both of these families - recently brought together through the love of their children - and gave them the details that no one ever wants to hear.

While I was sitting in their lounge room I could see the wedding photos proudly displayed.

But there was more to come. I got in the police vehicle with the girl's new father-in-law and we drove to his son's work. It was a quiet drive in painful silence - what do you say to a man you are taking with you to tell his son that the love of his life is dead?

Together, we walked into the workshop and spoke to the manager who told me that the man I was there to see was out the back.

I walked through to him and, with his dad standing there with me, I told him that his wife had been killed in a crash.

With this news I watched this grown man collapse in front of me.

His emotions and the expression on his face cannot be described, but I will remember it forever.

People generally say to me: "I don't know how you do it. How do you go to someone's house and tell them that their loved one is dead?"

I was required to deliver this news three times last year. Other police around this state have had to do the same thing.

More than 300 families last year were told by a police officer that someone they loved had been killed in a motor vehicle collision.

When I go about my normal daily duties, you can be sure when I sign and hand someone a speeding fine or a fine for drink-driving - or any other offence committed on our roads - this is in the back of my mind.

Think about how your family will react when I am knocking on their door the next time you think of speeding or committing a traffic offence.

Don't take the risk this Easter, because nothing in the world is worth that knock on the door.

Sen-Constable Brad Cummins works at the Cardinia traffic management unit

[desGT]

That is a "great" article on the realities. Much better than all those ads on the TV and posters.

[Thornie]

It's stories like this which make me not want to have to drive home today, with amount of morons on the road during holiday periods rushing to get where they are going

[james22]

Certainly an eye opener. That article said more in a page, than a thousand road safety campaigns ever could get across. Very sad