It has been a busy and interesting year in the osby household.
Our beautiful daughter continues to make great progress in her recovery.
We have a had a year filled with Doctors, Lawyers, Therapist, Psychologists, Court proceedings, Insurance claims.... All for the benefit of our daughter.
If you were to see or meet our daughter for a short period you might not know that there had ever been an accident. She has some "deficits" with short term memory and processing speed that can be noticed when spending more time with her.
We have been very fortunate as all who have assisted with her recovery are amazed at the progress she has made and continues to make. All the prayers, good thoughts and a strong willed young lady are paying off.
A sincere thank you to all who contributed here.
A few words of things I have learned that might help others here.
Michigan is a no fault insurance state. It is one of the most expensive states for purchasing insurance. We also have a Catastrophic Fund that all drivers contribute to. To date this fund has paid over $900,000.00 toward my daughters treatment and recovery. No money has come out of our pocket related to this.
Get with your insurance company and make sure you have coverage in place that if something were to happen you would be covered. We also have added a $1m rider to our policy as protection in case we were to cause an accident that caused bodily injury to others. It costs us about $250.00 per year for this coverage.
If we had been in another state where limits were set on the policy usually 250/500,000 our daughter's recovery expenses would have not been covered or treatments would have stopped when those limits were reached. The outcome of either of those would be lack of treatments and or bankruptcy. My advice is make sure you have coverage.
I changed my sig line a while back to reflect my attitude on cell phones and driving. Distracted driving is terrible and getting worse everyday. People using phones is the worst, but there are so many ways to be distracted while driving. Over the course of my life I have been guilty of just about every form of distracted driving you could think of. I have driven about 2 million miles and been fortunate to have only had two small accidents.
My advice is to pull over to text, stop to eat lunch, If we go through a drive thru, I go find a local park to eat. Grooming is done in the bathroom, not the rear view mirror. Play with the radio/stereo at stop lights, have passengers run navigation/maps. Have passengers text for you, let them play with the radio. Pull over to make that important call. If you are a passenger tell the driver you are there to help. Let them focus on driving
The above suggestions are things that might take a little more time or be inconvenient, but in the grand scheme being 5 minutes later or letting someone control the radio, garmin or phone could be the action that saves you from being in an accident. Everyday when driving I am able to spot distracted drivers, I have been able to avoid accidents by being aware and not distracted.
Yes I am very opinionated on this. Distracted driving was the cause of my daughter's injuries. It killed her boyfriend and injured two other young adults. It could have just as easily killed all the young adults involved.
Be safe, be smart and take care of yourself and your loved ones.
64osby - Mike
