My life was changed (and almost taken) in a split-second after a "distracted" car driver who was texting on his mobile phone smashed head-on into my motorcycle, sending me flying over his car, onto the road, while breaking bones and causing serious and permanent injuries to my body.
Lucky to still be alive, I was taken to Royal Perth Hospital, where I spent several weeks in the State Trauma ward, had to undergo 3 major operations and was later transferred to Fiona Stanley Hospital where I stayed for a couple more months until I was finally able to stand and then walk 3 months later.
According to the Australian Dept of Infrastructure, an average of 1,243 people are killed on Australian roads each year! That's almost 4 people every week!
None of us want to be just another statistic, nor do we want to live with the guilt of being responsible for taking the life of another innocent victim.
In 2016 (the year of my crash) a distracted car driver who was more interested in texting than paying attention to the road ahead, almost increased the number from 1,271 to 1,272, by taking my life from me and simply turning me into just another number.
Just another number to many, yet the reality is, these are not just numbers - they are lives. For every number chalked up on the board, there are hundreds of other lives affected by those close to them.
My students get an additional FREE first-hand account of the importance of road safety
Story
They say that nobody ever gets to the end of their life and said ... "I wish I'd spent more time in the office!"
In fact - to the contary. When you get to the end and your time is up you're not going to care a bit about the things you have, the possessions you own, the amount of money you have, or how hard you worked to get them. You wont care about the little things that once annoyed you, or the time that someone took your car parking spot in the shopping center car park!
The only thing that's going to matter to you in the end is your relationships and the impact you've made on others, as well as the difference you've made in the world - How the world has been made a better place because of you being here.
Having a "near death" experience is certainly a real "wake-up" call and, in my own recent experience, a reality check about what's important and what really matters most in life.
While I'm not trying to turn my own experience into a "Come to Jesus" moment, I'm certainly wanting to illustrate that the roads are an extremerly dangerous place for all of us, and, each year in Australia, many innocent drivers venture out in their normal daily lives and never come home, or wind up injured or permanently disabled as a direct result of someone else's stupidity or carelessness.
The cost of road trauma to Australia is not only Billions of dollars, but more importantly, it costs lives and it costs more than money can ever replace in terms of the impact it has on the family, friends, co-workers and loved ones of those whos lives are impacted directly each time another life is quickly taken from us on the roads.
