My name is Bonnie Brantley, I started out my career as an Emergency Medical Technician. I got into this career to help people.

One Friday afternoon around 5:00 p.m. we were dispatched to a motor vehicle crash. On arrival we found that two cars had run head on with each other. In the first car was a mother driving with her 4-year-old daughter in the back seat. That she had just picked up from daycare. In the second car driving was a 16-year-old girl and her father in the front passenger seat. The mother in the first car had crossed over into the second car’s lane and hit them head on. The little girl with her mother, was not in a car seat and she was not even wearing a seat belt. The little girl was ejected from the back seat through the windshield and was lying on what was left of the hood of the car dead on our arrival. The mother was not wearing her seat belt but was not injured. The 16-year-old was wearing her seat belt was trapped in the car. Her father was also trapped.

We had to use the jaws of life to remove both of them. We had to work a trauma code on the father, but he died at the hospital. The 16-year-old girl was flown to a trauma center with massive injuries. The mother of car number one was transported to the hospital because of the mechanism of injuries. At the hospital we found out that she was drunk. She had picked up her daughter from daycare drunk.

At that time, I realized I was too late to help people. I had to do something about helping before the injuries happen. That is when I started looking into injury prevention.

Now I’m a car seat technician, I do ghost out and crash reenactments in the high schools in the four counties I cover with Safe Kids. I’m part of the Drive Alive program and the Buckle Up America program. I’m also a poison prevention instructor. I also do injury prevention program on bike safety, pedestrian safety, gun safety, fire safety, water safety, sports safety, hypothermia safety, ATV Safety and safe sitters. This one event changed my life forever.