POWER LINES

SPECIAL REPORT: Distracted driving

Lineworkers have one of the more dangerous jobs on the planet, so safety is always foremost on their minds when they’re out there keeping the lights on. Unfortunately, they can’t control every work area — they rely on the community to keep them safe when they’re working by the roadside. In honor of Lineworker Appreciation Day, we examine the dangers of distracted driving and implore members to keep their eyes on the road.

Danger zones

The constant presence of road crews, traffic cones, and orange barrels on Ohio highways, byways, and township roads is a way of life for Ohio drivers. With the rise in distracted driving in recent years, those roadside crews have never been more vulnerable to serious injuries.

BY JANET MURPHY

In the wee morning hours of Aug. 28, 2019, a line crew from Lancaster-based South Central Power Company was called to address a power hazard along State Route 73 near Hillsboro. An Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper guarded the zone while the crew established a new traffic path for drivers, setting cones and putting caution lights in place. As the linemen were about to begin work, the trooper confirmed that the work site met construction zone safety standards and headed out. An instant later, an alcohol-impaired driver careened through the work zone, crashing into the crew’s massive digger truck. Under the impact, the truck slid, striking lineman Al Sears and sending him airborne. Sears, a 26-year veteran of South Central Power’s line crew, landed nearly 40 feet away on the gravel berm. He lay quiet and still. Stunned, the crew rushed to his side, performing first aid as they waited for the 911 team to arrive. It was a horrifying situation, the kind of thing that line crews and their families worry about most. Earlier that year, a crew from another company was working along a Hillsboro road when a driver plowed through their work zone, killing one lineman and injuring two others. “To have two line crews struck by drivers within one year was just incomprehensible for us,” says Buzz Detty, South Central Power’s safety and compliance manager. “It was a real eye-opener for us.” For electric co-ops in Ohio and everywhere, distracted drivers are a leading cause of downed power lines, broken poles, and electric outages. Worse yet, they place lineworkers in danger. Sears was fortunate. He was transported to the hospital, where X-rays showed only minor injuries, and he returned home later that evening. “I learned a big lesson,” he says. “Never take your eyes off the traffic when working in the road right-of-way. Complacency can be a killer.”

For a series of videos highlighting the problem of distracted driving, check out www. ohiocoopliving.com.

In the blink of a fly

How one co-op member’s tragedy has led her to fight to get drivers to keep their eyes on the road.

BY JODI BORGER

It was a sunny, clear-blue-sky day on June 16, 2018. It also was a day that would forever change the lives of Leah Fullenkamp and her family. Leah, a Pioneer Electric Cooperative member, was on her couch recovering from foot surgery she had undergone just 24 hours earlier, while her husband, John, a full-time engineer and part-time farmer (to the extent there is such a thing), was busy in the fields trying to get things ready before an upcoming work trip. The couple’s four children were with John’s mother, with plans to meet John in the field with dinner.

John never received that visit or that dinner.

While he was driving his tractor on the roadway, a distracted driver — shopping on her phone and, based on crash reconstruction analysis, distracted for a full 16 seconds — plowed into the tractor and took John’s life.

From that moment, everything changed. John’s death left Leah to raise their children, ranging in age from 8 months old to 9 years, by herself. “I lost my husband, my partner, and the father of my children,” Leah says. “Life got hard — really hard — and it happened instantly.”

“I started asking myself, ‘How can I prevent this from happening to someone else?’ I didn’t want my story to be anyone else’s story.” — Leah Fullenkamp

That autumn, Leah returned to her job teaching school, but it didn’t go well. She worked with special needs students during the day, then came home to four kids who needed her full attention all night. John’s loss weighed heavily on Leah and their children. The following summer, she decided to resign from her teaching position and stay home with her children.

One evening, Leah was driving down a main highway and passed a tractor going the opposite direction. In the very next car, a driver was on her phone and not paying attention. When Leah got home, she sat in her driveway and listened for sirens. She felt helpless.

“I started asking myself, ‘How can I prevent this from happening to someone else?’” Leah says. “I didn’t want my story to be anyone else’s story.”

Not long after that, Leah posted a picture of John and their son on a tractor on her Facebook page, marking the occasion of the first planting season without John. The post was shared over 500 times. “That was when I started to realize the power in our story,” she says.

Leah created a Facebook page, In the Blink of a Fly — named for a housefly that began visiting the Fullenkamps within days after John’s death and quickly became a symbol of strength and encouragement for their family.

Leah Fullenkamp and her family had their lives changed in the short span it took for a distracted driver to claim the life of her husband, John. She eventually gave up her full-time job to raise their kids and devote time to her campaign to eliminate distracted driving.

When Leah Fullenkamp posted a photo on Facebook to mark the first planting season without her husband, it was shared more than 500 times, and she used the power of her story to create a public awareness campaign with her kids.

“A fly always seemed to show up during conversations when I knew John would have an opinion — during tough decisions and special events,” says Leah. “It wouldn’t visit every day, not even every week, but enough to notice.”

Leah combined her new household visitor with the way her life changed in the blink of an eye to come up with the name of her mission. On her blog at www.intheblinkofafly.com, she tells her story and shares her family’s journey and things she’s learned along the way.

Leah expanded her outreach to include local high schools and community groups, where she raises awareness about distracted driving. “It’s not only teenagers who drive distracted, but people of all ages,” says Leah. The woman who hit John was in her mid-50s. The pandemic has slowed Leah’s presentation opportunities, but she’s finding other ways to promote her message. In 2020, she teamed with Shelby County Farm Bureau’s “Share the Road” campaign to help spread awareness of farm equipment traveling on roadways.

The campaign raised money through local business donations for a portable billboard that sits near where John’s accident occurred, as well as yard signs that serve as a reminder: “Eyes Up. Phone Down. It Can Wait.”

“If you’re driving, it’s important to stay focused. Don’t let something small impact your life, your family’s life, or someone else’s life,” says Leah. “This is my story, but I’m not special. This could happen to anyone.”

COSTLY DIVERSIONS

BY JEFF MCCALLISTER

More and more people get behind the wheels of cars these days with a phone or a sandwich in hand — or in any number of other attention-hogging situations — and give less and less of their concentration to driving safely.

“Distracted driving is a costly problem for society in general,” says Ron Salyer, president and CEO of Pioneer Electric Cooperative in Piqua, who has been outspoken in his effort to bring awareness to the issue.

From mere property damage to ruining — or ending — lives, some of those costs are easier to figure out than others. According to a survey of electric cooperatives in Ohio, for example, it costs $2,576, on average, to replace a pole that has been damaged in a car crash. Generally, that’s paid by the driver’s insurance, but not always. There are other costs, too.

Salyer says that depending on the location of such an accident and the type of lines a particular pole carries, those accidents also cause power outages that can affect from a few to a few hundred consumer-members, and those outages can last for hours.

“Those secondary effects on both our members and our line crews actually take a higher toll than just the money that those crashes cost,” he says.

Nearly every lineworker has a horror story about a near-miss on the job, when a distracted driver has made a dangerous job even more precarious. Coops have even instituted additional safety measures recently specifically designed to focus drivers’ attention on roadside worksites because of the rise in such incidents.

Sometimes, however, those crashes can have longterm effects on linemen, even when the crews are not directly involved.

In rural areas served by co-ops, the line crews can often be the first people to arrive on an accident scene. “These guys are trained to do the dangerous job of providing reliable electricity, but they don’t have training to cope with some of the awful things they’ve seen at crash scenes,” Salyer says. “I’ve talked with plenty of linemen who have experienced that, and to a one, they all say it’s something that will affect them for the rest of their lives.”

Safety on the roadway

13,485

Car crashes in Ohio in 2019 that were related to distracted driving, according to the state highway patrol. Nearly 400 of those resulted in a serious injury or fatality. Authorities believe the actual number is probably much higher, as it is often impossible to prove and so is underreported.

5

Seconds the average person takes to look at a text message. At 55 mph, that’s like driving the length of a football field with a blindfold on.

$300

Fine for a driver’s first violation of Ohio’s Move Over law, which requires all drivers to move over one lane when passing by any vehicle with flashing or rotating lights parked on the roadside — or to slow down if moving over isn’t possible.

11

Snow plows hit by drivers in Ohio this past winter alone, many the result of lack of attention in already dangerous conditions.

10X

Increased severity of crashes that are caused by distracted driving compared to nondistracted driving crashes.

23x

Increase in the likelihood of a driver becoming involved in a crash if the driver is text messaging or looking at their phone while on the road.

18%

Percentage of Ohio car crash fatalities caused by distracted drivers (and 16% of all serious crash-related injuries).