Editorial: Stakes are too high to drive distractedly
Given Illinois' population, it should come as no surprise that the state ranks behind only Texas, New York and California in the number of police officers to die in the line of duty.
The Officer Down Memorial Page, which chronicles the deaths of police officers nationwide, says that in 200 years 1,108 officers have died on the job in Illinois.
It also notes that this year Illinois outranks all other states with four deaths, three at the hands of motorists.
And three of Illinois' four police deaths this year occurred last month.
As the message signs on Illinois tollways demand, "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH."
Cops and Crime columnists Chuck Keeshan and Susan Sarkauskas wrote just two weeks ago that already this year, 14 Illinois State Police patrol vehicles had been hit by passing vehicles as they were stopped along a road with emergency lights flashing.
That column was written before Trooper Brooke Jones-Story, 34, was killed on March 28 by a tractor-trailer truck as she conducted a traffic stop on U.S. Route 20 in Freeport. She left behind a husband. And before Trooper Gerald Ellis, 36, was killed in a collision with a wrong-way driver on I-94 in Green Oaks at 3:25 a.m. March 30. He leaves behind a wife and two daughters.
The 14 cases of troopers getting hit along the side of the road had eclipsed the total for either all of 2017 or all of 2018 and put Illinois on a pace to more than double the five-year high of 27 in 2015.
Among those 14 cases, 12 crashes left a trooper injured. One of them involved Trooper Christopher Lambert, who was killed as he investigated the scene of a prior crash on I-294 near Willow Road in Northbrook. Lambert, 34, left behind a wife and daughter.
When will this madness end?
The fourth officer killed this year was McHenry County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Keltner, 35, who was shot to death while serving an arrest warrant.
When a cop takes the oath, there is a certain expectation that he or she will encounter danger while responding to robberies or domestic violence calls - less so when ticketing speeders and assisting cars in breakdown lanes.
More than twice as many police officers in Illinois die from gunfire than from a vehicular crash of some sort. But it's clear that the latter is becoming something of an epidemic.
Scott's law, or the "Move Over" law, mandates that when approaching an emergency vehicle stopped along the roadway you must proceed with caution, change lanes if possible and slow down. Failure to do so could earn you a fine of up to $10,000. If you break this law while intoxicated, you could face a license suspension. If you kill someone, you're looking at two years in prison.
So for Pete's sake, don't drink and drive. And when you do drive, put down your phone and give emergency workers a wide berth.
They don't deserve this.