Don’t let your prized possessions end up as debris that could cause a crash on the highway.
It’s moving season for some Iowa college students. For many, that means asserting your adulthood by trying to get as much stuff into or on top of a vehicle as possible and moving it from point A to point B with minimal assistance.
Information supplied by the Bureau of Budget and Business Systems
In her 35 years with the Iowa DOT, Brenda McCuen was a friend and mentor to many, serving Iowans and her coworkers with pride. Brenda, who was well known to most at the Ankeny complex and others throughout the DOT, unexpectedly passed away on March 12.
Traci Sharr, who worked with Brenda said, “She was our calmness in the storm and we miss that every day The biggest thing that has stuck out to me since Brenda passed and that I carry daily with me is her ‘I can fix it or do it.’ attitude. This was not just her attitude but the way she lived her life. You would never see Brenda struggle or give up. She would always figure it out or get it done no matter what.”
Brenda’s attitude has inspired Traci to adopt that same approach to her daily work and life. “There are lots of situations at work that I would have gone to Brenda for help, but now I have had to remind myself that Brenda would have just figured it out. She wouldn’t stress about it. I can hear her saying, ‘It's ok, we will get it figured out!’ So I take a moment and take a deep breath and figure things out by process of elimination, just like she would have done.” Traci explained, “I know there are many more people that she inspired in the same way over the years. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to make sure her memory lived on around our office.”
It’s dark and you’re driving on the interstate. Up ahead you see a bunch of flashing lights at a crash scene. You aren’t sure if the flashing lights are that of law enforcement, a maintenance vehicle, someone working on utilities, or just someone broken down alongside the road. What’s your first move?
No matter what type of lights are flashing, your instinct should be to move over and slow down to a speed that would allow you to easily react if something unexpected were to happen.
Information supplied by the Bureau of Budget and Business Systems
Imagine you are sitting at a stop sign on a one-way road when all of a sudden another vehicle, like the pickup in the photo, turns beside you and is headed the wrong way down the road. You are likely flooded with emotions like panic, worry, and fear for the safety of that driver and anyone who might be traveling on the road behind you. It turns out that drivers get confused and go the wrong direction down Iowa highways quite often. While most wrong-way drivers realize their mistakes and turn around before anything bad happens, each year there are dozens of wrong-way drivers who cause crashes, injuries, or even death for themselves or others on the road.
Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer are here! The longer, sunnier days provide lots of light to get things done. But if you’re trying to cram too much in each day, you could end up drowsy by the time you head back home.
You might not think that getting behind the wheel when you’re drowsy is a big deal but consider this, the Sleep Foundation notes: “Drowsy driving is dangerous even if a person doesn’t actually fall asleep. Research shows that sleep deprivation leads to mental impairment that is similar to drunkenness with 24 hours of sleep deprivation roughly equating to a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.10%.”
Even though data from the 2020 Iowa Seat Belt Use Survey shows that 95.2 percent of Iowa front seat passengers buckle up, there are still people who come up with every excuse in the book not to wear a seat belt. These excuses can be deadly since nearly half of those people killed on Iowa’s roadways might have survived if they had put their excuses on the shelf and buckled their belts.
Girls don’t work in transportation fields. Or at least that was an unspoken sentiment for decades in what had always been a male-dominated industry. Slowly but surely the landscape is changing to be more inclusive and several Iowa Department of Transportation employees are helping lead the change through Iowa’s award-winning WTS International (formerly known as Women’s Transportation Seminar) chapter.
Information supplied by the Bureau of Budget and Business Systems
