The Immeasureable Price of Safety

Anyone who is a friend of mine will tell you that I am a political junkie. I have been known to curse at my television on a regular and will sit down to discuss healthcare in the local coffee shop with anyone who is willing to listen. Not only will I engage in heated discussions on how the rich take advantage of the poor and middle class, but how in some cases the rich make conscious decisions to put profits over the health and safety of the average Joe.


In an ideal world, Jack McCoy would take the Toyotas and Masseys of the world to the mat and hold them all accountable to the world for their criminal negligence. Generally, that doesn’t happen so we are forced to follow the small handful of those who are willing to go on the internet and radio waves to challenge the companies.

A few days ago this commentary would have been all about Toyota and their decision to put profits over safety or the decision of the Massey mining company to ignore or finagle their way out of paying for safety violations which led to the deaths of the 29 miners in West Virginia. I would have talked a little about the airlines and how they have done their research and found that it is cheaper to settle with the families of passengers rather than provide equipment that would increase their chances of survival in crashes. Instead I am going to talk about a negligence that is closer to home that is occurring within our government that always claims to “by and for the people.”

A couple of days ago, the reckless behavior of Michigan Department of Transportation hit home. My father, who has worked hard and paid taxes his entire life, was on his way to work at 5:30am. As he was driving South on M-10 in Detroit towards the Eastern Market, he heard what sounded like an explosion in his car. He looked and saw that his window was shattered and began to feel a sharp pain in his side. A 4” x 4” x 8” piece of the overpass (roughly the size of a brick) had fallen from above, straight through the window and into his body.

He felt his body going dumb and saw the concrete median coming closer. He was losing feeling in his body but his will to survive kicked in. Although he has been cutting meat for over fifty year and as a result has lost a great deal of the feeling and strength in his hands, he found the strength to steer the truck away from the median and onto the raised curb.

Cars whizzed by without one choosing to stop and offer assistance. My semi-consensus father located his cell phone and called 911 to ask for assistance. After about 15 minutes they still had not arrived, so he was forced to call back. They informed him that they needed his location once again. Finally, the EMS and the state troopers arrived to help. The trooper expressed his frustration that nobody, including those who were in the immediate vicinity as the accident occurred, had stopped. Beyond the frustration, he advised my father not to let anything happen to the piece of the overpass which was lodged in his clothing along with broken glass from the windshield.

The EMS took my father to the intensive care unit where he stayed for about a week. He was diagnosed with four broken ribs, a punctured lung and other minor pains and bruises. His quality of life will never be the same. In the meantime, my mother and other family members began researching the background of the incident and what remedies were available. She went down to the scene of the accident and took pictures. The pictures clearly showed that pieces of the overpass were falling down causing a clear and present threat to the everyday citizens who travel along the road. It was easy to pinpoint where the piece has fallen from and where others had also fallen and even more that were ready to fall at any moment. My mother took pictures of other overpasses, some of which had been repaired and others, including the one which nearly claimed my father’s life, which had not.

Further research concluded that this was not the first time someone had been injured by falling overpass. In the other case, instead of using its resources to tend to their injured, tax-paying citizen, the State of Michigan, after a court found them liable, attempted to use its resources to again argue that they were not culpable, arguing that they were only responsible for the roadways and not the overpasses. The State Supreme Court finally ruled against and ordered them to pay the victim.

The conclusion that could only be drawn in the injury to my father is that the Department of Transportation made a business decision that cost of the fixing the road ways was not worth it and decided instead to put the lives of the citizens of the City of Detroit and State of Michigan at risk. First, the court determined that it was the State’s responsibility to care for the overpass. Second, the fact that other overpasses had recently been fixed means that officials knew that a problem existed, and instead of fixing the problems, the business decision was made to gamble on which overpasses they hoped presented the least chance of killing someone.

In the legal system, the neglect of a government must rise beyond “negligence” and meet a standard of “gross negligence.” The State of Michigan’s actions, go beyond even gross negligence and should be considered criminal, as should those of Toyota, Massey, and if the day comes when a plane crashes and it is found that the equipment that could have saved lives was deemed to be too costly, the airlines.

Anytime that an executive, an elected official or their representative makes a conscious decision that the bottom line is more important than a human life and leads their company or department down a road that eventually leads to the loss of life or limb, the ultimate cost should go beyond monetary and instead be a loss of freedom to make these decisions. I doubt Jack McCoy would have it any other way.