Jason works with a guy who is a fire-fighter on-call, and last week, he told Jason a heartbreaking story about two young women...So a major highway up here (35W) has been under lots of construction since the bridge collapse in '07, and since its completion, MNDOT has been moving its way North up 35W--completing one construction task after another...Anyway, one evening last week, around 9:30 p.m., there was a ton of traffic congestion near Forest Lake (about 25 miles north of Minneapolis) one particular spot was so bad that all traffic had come to a complete stop. A young woman, driving a VW Rabbit, at the back of the line of cars, was listening to music and hoping for the traffic to clear when out of the blue, another car rammed into the back of her going 75+ miles/hour... causing 6 other cars to ram into each other as well..The driver of this car was another young woman who somehow didn't realize she was supposed to stop...Anyway, the 1st young woman did survive the crash, miraculously, and Jason's friend was even able to talk to her and ask her questions, but after a few hours, she died beside him in the helicopter on the way to the hospital of cardiac arrest--due to all of the trauma that her body had endured. The woman that hit her was completely fine...and later, paramedics found her cell phone lodged in her windshield; she had been texting.
A word to the wise: PLEASE DON'T TEXT WHILE YOU DRIVE...it's dangerous, selfish, and wrong...and it can kill people. My heart just breaks for both of these young women--the one who suffered and died and the one who has to live the rest of her life knowing that she caused this death simply because she was looking down at her phone while driving. I love you all too much...be safe out there!