Now we stop ... and look ... and listen.
Lisa Sutherland, 49, was seriously injured shortly before noon Feb. 23 when her 1997 Dodge Stratus was struck broadside by a 2003 Ford F-150 pickup driven by 45-year-old Jeffrey Lorah at the intersection of county roads 203 and 159, some three miles north and one mile west of Altus.
Lisa's car caught on fire, and Lorah and other passersby were able to get her out of her vehicle. After being stabilized at Jackson County Memorial Hospital, Sutherland was flown in a Blackhawk helicopter dispatched from Fort Sill to Comanche County Memorial Hospital in Lawton, then to Southwest Medical Center in Lawton where she was admitted in critical condition with head trauma.
Lisa's father, Robert Bostick, said a Southwest Medical urologist told him that the impact of the collision injured her brain "like a baby-shaking syndrome 10 times." The only thing keeping her alive when she was pulled out of the car was her brain stem.
Lisa -- a daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, sister and friend to many -- died March 12 in her home at Bitter Creek in the Martha area. "The last year or two were probably the happiest of her life because she was just starting to discover herself," Bostick said.
The intersection where Lisa was hit is one of more than a hundred in Jackson County with no traffic control signs, and both roads are unpaved. Of the 1,483 total miles of county roads, said Jackson County Commission Chairman Dale Dunn, in whose District 1 the accident occurred, only some 350 miles are paved.
Bostick wants to see changes in the law, and he has written a letter to Rep. David Braddock requesting that legislation be passed that would impose a mandatory fine of $1,000 and a week in jail for accidents caused by neglect at uncontrolled intersections. State law regarding such neglect, Bostick said, is too weak, adding, "I want it to hurt."
Currently, the fine and court costs for failure to yield the right of way at an intersection is $173.90.
The Feb. 23 collision is still under investigation by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, and no culpability has yet been determined.
The intersection of county roads 203 and 159 is visible from at least a quarter mile in all directions, Dunn said. On that fatal day, Lisa was driving east on 159, Lorah was driving north on 203. Lisa was the first into the intersection, Bostick said. "You can't answer the question 'Did she see him?' he said. "You can't say at this point."
According to the Oklahoma Driver's Manual, at an intersection without stop signs or signals, the car or truck that enters the intersection first has the right of way. When two vehicles approach at the same time, the driver on the left yields to the driver on the right.
However, it cautions, "Always slow down, look both ways, and look left again before you enter an intersection." And, it states, more collisions and injuries occur at intersections than at any other place. "Many collisions at intersections," the manual says, "could have been avoided if one of the drivers had been more cautious and willing to yield the right of way."
And that, Dunn said, is when assumption on the part of a driver that the other driver is going to yield is dangerous. "That's assuming something on my part that could cost me my life," he said.
Dunn attended Lisa's funeral March 15 and is "very sorry that that happened," he said. However, he feels that state law regarding right of way and the maximum 55 mph speed limit on county roads are sufficient provisions for drivers who, he said, should use a "little bit of sense" and keep their speed a little below the maximum allowed.
It is the commissioners' job, he said, to determine if accidents get to be a big problem at particular intersections and to post those intersections with a stop sign or a yield sign.
Dunn emphasizes that the rules that govern right of way are familiar to all drivers, young and old alike. "Driver's ed teachers teach that to every kid wherever there's driver's ed in the state of Oklahoma," he said.
Through classes that he has attended, he said, he has learned that the less you control the flow of traffic in rural areas, the better, adding that starting and stopping at intersections is a safety hazard. And, he said, the average daily usage of county roads, other than during the irrigation season -- roughly July through the first week of September -- is about 30 vehicles in either direction.
"To me, common sense and the state law takes effect," he said, adding that attempting to put control signs at all the uncontrolled intersections in the county would be economically unfeasible. "There's not a government agency out there that's strapped any more than county government," he said.
And even if signs were put up, he said, "It's still up to those drivers to yield."
For his part, Bostick -- who has recently lost a daughter to a tragic accident -- besides his plea for increased penalties, wants to see a publicity effort by the county to remind drivers of the dangers that lurk at uncontrolled intersections. "I just want people to be aware that they're dangerous, and they're just like a rattlesnake," he said.
Bostick, and his wife Joyce, mourn the loss of Lisa. She and her husband Paul, who works for the Boeing Corp. as a C-17 loadmaster training instructor, were in the middle of a $20,000 renovation of their Bitter Creek home in order to host life groups of their spiritual family, Altus Christian Fellowship. Lisa, Bostick said, recorded a gospel record two years ago at a studio in Hobart -- a "musical witness."
She was a CASA volunteer and a good mother who raised three children, he said, and she never worked outside the home. She attended psychology and music classes at Western Oklahoma State College and was auditioning for a voice music scholarship. The couple, Bostick said, were involved in the community, and Paul has "given thousands of dollars in the Lord's work."
"In Oklahoma," Bostick said, "I have to ask the question ... what's a life worth?"
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