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Last week, two brothers — one a high school hockey coach, the other an NHL all star, — were killed by an impatient and suspected drunk driver while the pair were riding bikes in rural New Jersey. Johnny Gaudreau, who won the prestigious Hobey Baker Award while playing hockey at Boston College, played professionally for the Columbus Blue Jackets. His brother Matthew also played at BC and coached hockey at Gloucester Catholic High School.
Johnny left behind a wife and two young children. Matthew and his wife were expecting their first child. The Gaudreaus were set to be groomsmen in their sister’s wedding last Friday.
Teams from many different sports honored the Gaudreau’s in recent days.
According to authorities, the driver who struck the Gaudreaus tried to pass a vehicle on the right-hand side, striking the two men on bikes. The driver acknowledged having five or six beers before the crash and said he was drinking while driving, according to a criminal complaint. He has been charged with two counts of death by auto, along with reckless driving, possession of an open container and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle.
Most pedestrians and bicyclists killed in the U.S. are not as famous as the Gaudreaus. Their deaths are just as tragic and senseless however.
So far this year, 117 people have died in highway crashes in Maine. Four of them were pedestrians, according to data from the Maine Department of Transportation. A fifth pedestrian was killed last month, according to the Bicycle Coalition of Maine. Although December is often the most deadly month for pedestrian fatalities, the number of fatal pedestrian crashes this year is trending to be lower than recent years. Last year, 18 pedestrians were killed by motorists, and 20 were killed in 2022, the highest in two decades.
The DOT data shows that 128 pedestrians have been injured in collisions with motor vehicles this year, which again is trending lower than in previous years.
So far this year, 109 bicyclists have been injured in crashes with motor vehicles. August is often the month with the highest number of crashes and 30 bicycle-vehicle collisions occurred last month. Last year and in 2022, two bicyclists were killed by motor vehicle drivers. No bicyclist fatalities have thankfully happened this year.
While these downward trends are encouraging, many of these accidents are avoidable. Speed and driver distraction play a role in many of Maine’s traffic accidents.
Speeding has accounted for 27 percent of fatal crashes in the last five years in Maine, according to the Maine DOT.
“Even small increases in speed can increase the risk of injury and death for drivers and passengers. Higher driving speeds increase braking distance and provide less time to process information and then to act on it,” Lauren V. Stewart, the director of the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety, wrote in a recent column.
“Safe driving is the responsibility of each one of us that uses the public roads for transportation as a condition of our privilege to drive,” Stewart wrote. “We each must have a conscious and vested interest in being responsible road users and genuinely caring about the people we are sharing the road with, and we must keep that spirit of sharing and caring in the forefront of our minds, always, when driving. After all, the people sharing the road with you are someone’s grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, sons and daughters, and any one of them could be yours. Treat them as if they are yours.”
That’s not something many of us likely think about when we get behind the wheel of a car — caring. But, Stewart’s advice is well put. We must care about other road users and be responsible for keeping them out of harm’s way.
