Kansas heroes:Transportation safety winners honored

The Kansas Department of Transportation honored five Kansans with Transportation Safety Recognition Awards for their efforts to improve traffic safety. The awards were presented today at the 25th Annual Transportation Safety Conference that took place April 2-3 in Wichita.

Recipients are honored in two categories - People Saving People Award and the Hero Award. 

The People Saving People Award recognizes an individual or organization that has made outstanding contributions to the improvement of transportation safety behavior in Kansas. The 2019 recipients are: 

Rita Lesser, Perry – Lesser teaches at Perry-Lecompton High School and also serves as the sponsor for SAFE (Seatbelts Are For Everyone). As the SAFE sponsor, she teaches students about seat belt usage and distracted and impaired driving by creatively utilizing sidewalk messages, PSAs on YouTube, pledge cards, posters, window painting, health fair booths, drunk goggles and the Convincer (a crash simulator).

Amber Rollins, Olathe – Rollins is the Director of KidsAndCars.org, an organization that focuses attention on children left unattended in or around vehicles. She was instrumental in the passing of a Good Samaritan law (HB 2516) in Kansas to protect citizens from liability if they break into a vehicle to rescue a trapped child, vulnerable adult or animal.

Overland Park Police Department – The Overland Park Police Department utilized the Data-Driven Approach to Crime and Traffic Safety (DDACTS) to significantly reduce the number of crashes at Oak Park Mall and two major intersections adjacent to the mall. Officers focused on hazardous traffic violations and made every effort to monitor seat belt violations, distracted driving, teen drivers and motorists driving while impaired. As a result, overall crashes were reduced by 17 percent - from 214 crashes in 2017 to 177 in 2018.

The Hero Award recognizes the individual who risked his or her own life for someone else when they happened upon a crash or while trying to prevent the likelihood of a crash in a one-time traffic safety-related incident. The 2019 recipients are:

Deputy Robert K. Kunze, III, Sedgwick County – Kunze demonstrated extreme bravery and courage during a traffic stop in which he was mortally wounded but still managed to pursue and capture his assailant. He very likely saved the lives of two citizens onsite at the traffic stop and all the responding law enforcement officers who followed.

Sergeant Mitchell Talley, Miami County – Talley responded to a medical call in which a man was bleeding from a self-inflicted four-inch laceration on the left side of his neck. Talley believed the victim had severed an artery, and he continuously applied pressure to the area until EMS arrived and took over. The man survived because of Talley’s meritorious actions.

People Saving People nominations now being accepted by KDOT

Nominations for the 2017 People Saving People Award are now being accepted by the Kansas Department of Transportation.

The award is presented to a person or organization that advocates safety and has a positive effect in transportation safety behavior. Awards are presented in three categories: community leadership and engineering; education and information; and enforcement, emergency response, prosecution and adjudication.

           More details about the awards and nomination forms can be found at www.ktsro.org. Nominations must be submitted by email, mail or fax by midnight Feb. 10.

The awards will be presented April 5 at the annual Kansas Transportation Safety Conference in Wichita.

The 2016 winners include:

Karen Wittman, Kansas Attorney General’s Office—Wittman was a traffic safety resource prosecutor for the State of Kansas. Wittman taught classes, prosecuted cases, met with other impaired driving prevention professionals and coordinated with law enforcement and traffic safety resource prosecutors across the country. In addition she taught “boot camps” that provide new prosecutors with the basic resources for prosecuting impaired drivers.

Norraine Wingfield, Kansas Traffic Safety Resource Office— Wingfield has worked for the last 10 years to reduce traffic safety injuries and fatalities in Kansas with KTSRO. She has also served on the National Child Passenger Safety Board and the AARP Board of Directors and spoke at Lifesavers and Kidz in Motion conferences.

Brown County Sheriff’s Office: Teen Lifesaver Initiative— The Teen Lifesaver Initiative started two years ago, and teaches high school students first aid and CPR as well as how to use an Automated External Defibrillator to help those injured in serious crashes. Students from every high school in Brown County have been trained in live-saving measures from the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, Horton Police Department and the Brown County Health Department.

Addie Evans and Katelyn Burkhart, Buhler High School—The two students worked on a class project inspired by a friend’s severe injury due to a drunk driver. In their studies the two learned that the trauma caused by the death of a loved one is enough pain, but the trauma caused by a decision that could have been prevented is worse. With that in mind they organized a fundraising walk called March4Sobriety, designed t-shirts, created a GoFundMe page and distributed flyers. All of the money raised for the walk was donated to Mothers Against Drunk Driving-Kansas.