“I hit the buck going 70 miles per hour, and yet my son, daughter and I walked away with minor bumps and scratches. I have no doubt that if my children had not been safely secured in their car seats the outcome would have been very, very different,” said Sarah Smith of Olathe.

Logan O’Dea of Topeka was driving while it was raining and hit standing water. “I was wearing my seat belt … if I hadn’t been, my body would have been with the back-window glass they found flung 50 feet away from the car,” he said.

Smith and O’Dea are two of 20 people sharing stories in a blog series focused on the importance of traffic safety as part of Put the Brakes on Fatalities Day. Acting Federal Highway Administrator Brandye Hendrickson kicks off the series today. NHRA drag race legend Doug Herbert will also participate in the series.

“Every year, thousands of teens die in car crashes and hundreds of thousands more are taken to the hospital with serious injuries,” Herbert said. “This statistic became a reality for me in January of 2008 when my two boys, Jon and James, ages 17 and 12, were killed in a car crash.”

The Kansas Department of Transportation, the Kansas Highway Patrol and other transportation safety agencies across the state are participating’s Put the Brakes on Fatalities Day safety efforts. New stories can be viewed each weekday until Oct. 10 at http://kansastransportation.blogspot.com/.

Put the Brakes on Fatalities Day focuses on all types of traffic safety, whether you are in a vehicle, on a bike, on a motorcycle or walking across the street, and encourages everyone to take extra safety precautions.