Family's plea: Tie down car loads

All that remains of Meredith Deckard's tragic accident is a severely beaten bronze car — one that her family does not want Utah to forget.

Last December, Deckard was driving home from work along I-15 in Ogden. Suddenly, a box fell off the back of a truck in front of her. She swerved to miss it. In the chaos that ensued, she was T-boned by a semitrailer truck on her passenger side.

Forty days later, she succumbed to her injuries in McKay-Dee Hospital, leaving behind three sons and a grieving partner.

Now her family, including her partner, Bekah Moore, and her oldest son, CJ Frank, have joined the Utah Department of Transportation's Litter Hurts campaign, pleading with Utahns to tie down their vehicle's luggage so that Deckard's tragedy doesn't have to happen again.

"My children won't know my mom," Frank said Tuesday, holding back tears as he addressed a crowd gathered at UDOT's Maintenance Center in Murray, "all because someone didn't take five minutes to tie down their load."

Behind him was an enormous pile of ladders, boxes, couches and chairs, an unmarked headstone for those killed or injured in accidents such as Deckard's. UDOT employees had collected the items off the highways.

About 46 percent of Utahns have experienced damage to their automobiles as a result of cargo falling off the back of a car, according to a Dan Jones and Associates 2008 statewide survey. Deckard's lethal accident was one of two that year.

"Litter isn't just a nuisance, it is truly something dangerous," said John Fjord, UDOT executive director. Thankfully, Utah has seen a 22 percent decrease in the number of crashes since the Litter Hurts campaign began, Fjord said.

Deckard's family aims to keep reducing those numbers until there isn't one crash on Utah's highways because of a lawn chair or a box of tools that wasn't tied down. Frank said they decided to donate his mother's car to UDOT so it can be kept on display as a reminder of what his family lost. The driver likely never even knew that his or her lost cargo caused a deadly crash, he said. Frank said he isn't angry at the faceless driver.

"Please, I just plead to the community and all of Utah, please make sure your load is tied down," he said.

Moore, Deckard's partner, said they made a decision as a family to turn this tragedy into something positive. Both Frank and Moore have enrolled at Weber State University to become involved in saving lives — he through Life Flight training, she through health care. Deckard's life motto was "givers gain, takers lose," and there's hardly a better way to honor the memory of a giving mother and community volunteer than to give everyone else the right she was robbed of, Moore said: a safe drive home.

E-mail: mmcfall@desnews.com