Out of a mother's pain, safety for others

From our NewsPartner The Seattle Times, a review of the book "Out of Nowhere" by Robin Abel and author Peggy Sturdivant. Abel will speak, read from the books, and sign book copies on Tuesday, October 12, 7 pm, at Third Place Books at 17171 Bothell Way NE Lake Forest Park (where Ballinger Way meets Bothell Way, upper level of mall).

You might think that Robin Abel would get tired of telling the story about how her daughter was critically injured and blinded when a piece of furniture fell off a rented trailer, broke apart and a part of it bounced through her daughter's windshield.

It's a story about a preventable accident with an unhappy ending, a story that often moves her, and her listeners, to tears.  But Abel doesn't get tired of telling that story. In fact, doing so has become her mission

"I cry everyday, but I know that this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I know without a doubt that I am saving lives," she said.

Because of Abel and her refusal to stop telling the story, the state now has a law — known as Maria's Law, named for Abel's daughter, Maria Federici, — that criminalizes a person's failure to properly secure a load when an injury or death results.

Because of her, thousands of citations for unsecured loads are issued at waste-disposal sites where only handfuls were issued before.

Because of her, she says, people now know to move away from a truck or a trailer that is loaded in a hazardous fashion.

The complete story here.

Rep. Ruth Kagi

Rep. Ruth Kagi sponsored Maria's Law and was asked to speak at the event. However, she is scheduled to participate in a candidate forum in Richmond Beach that night and will be unable to be at the author event in LFP.

Representative Kagi was key to passage of Maria's Law and has become a major advocate for road safety and transportation. She has always been personally affected by the death of a close friend due to an improperly unsecured load, and it was the death of a local father in her district that was the first test of Maria's Law.