Making good choices is key to the theme "Don't be Driven to Distraction - Drive to Arrive" for the 10th Anniversary of Put the Brakes on Fatalities Day - October 10, 2010

Try to think of some of the significant things you have done that started with an initial action, the first step or the first day. Maybe it was a case where you quit smoking or even better yet put away your cell phone after nearly crashing into car with a mother and children in it that you said "never again will I use a cell phone while driving." Lives can be saved when there are changes in the personal choices a driver makes. "Don't be Driven to Distraction - Drive to Arrive" is a choice everyone can make this year by putting away their cell phones before starting their vehicle on October 10th - "Put the Brakes on Fatalities Day" - then continue the same choice every day of the year.

Put the Brakes on Fatalities Day (PBFD) was first observed on October 10, 2001 (patterned after the Great American Smokeout) and believed necessary when statistics showed that from 1995 to 2000 over 250,000 deaths had occurred or an average 41,500 annually (1/2 of attendees at a large football stadium on a fall afternoon). The annual number of fatalities has dropped to 37,261 in 2008 and to nearly 34,000 in 2009 or about 1 death every 15 minutes.

See http://www.brakesonfatalities.org/press.html for more information.