Brian Kuebler - The Long Blink: The true story of trauma, forgiveness, and one mans fight for safer roads

During my more than fifty-year career in television news, I have worked with an endless number of reporters. Some have been excellent storytellers. Some of their stories have made a significant difference. Brian Kueblers The Long Blink is the rare combination of both.

Kuebler is one of this countrys most persistent and dedicated investigative reporters whose writing eloquently animates some of the most important stories of our time. Once he met Ed Slattery, once he learned how Slatterys family was left broken forever by a tired truck driver, Kuebler not only saw an issue on our roads, but also a gripping personal story of tragedy and loss that helps restore our faith in humanity, and the often elusive power of forgiveness.

For nine years, Brian Kuebler lived and breathed this story and has now punched through our televisions to deliver these characters and their true story in a compelling book you wont soon forget.

The Long Blink is a must read!

~ Richard Sher

Longtime broadcast journalist | former Oprah talk show co-host

Baltimore, Maryland

USA

Behler Publications

The Long Blink

A Behler Publications Book

Copyright (c) 2020 by Brian Kuebler

Cover design by Yvonne Parks - www.pearcreative.ca

Back cover photo credit: Kevin S. Persaud (KSP Images)

THE LONG BLINK is a true story based on audio and video recorded interviews, news stories, police reports, public court filings, congressional hearings, legal and medical records.

Rights to use scripts of selected news reports and interviews within those stories were granted with the permission of Scripps/WMAR-TV

Some names have been changed to protect their privacy.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

FIRST PRINTING

ISBN 13: 9781941887042

e-book ISBN 9781941887059

Published by Behler Publications, LLC, USA

www.behlerpublications.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

For my wife Tiffany who absolutely

refused to let me stop writing.

And for my dog Shea,

who was curled up at my feet

for every last word.

There are few stories in a journalists career that challenge, exhilarate, or alter a reporters worldview. Fewer still are the ones they remember, that are worth remembering. If you corner a journalist and ask them, they might very well regale you with a tale of how they helped change the world by getting a law created or signed in their local legislature, or maybe, for the true writers in some of us, the few times they were able to express the true human condition in a brilliant turn of phrase. There is honor in this profession and it is certainly achieved by such milestones, one story at a time.

I never set out to change the world. My journalism always had more of a modest goal, simply inform those who can. To me, that was nobler than claiming credit for any such law, or change in policy to protect whomever or whatever. So often our business rushes to take credit, warn, protect, and break. I simply told the stories I thought needed told; the hard, grimy, tough stories in a tough city. I was a crime reporter; my prism was blue and red flashing lights.

So when my boss at the time assigned me the story of Ed Slattery and his family, I hesitated. While I certainly knew it needed telling, I didnt see myself as the one to tell it. It was tragic. A trucker fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into the Slatterys car with a force so great, it would irrevocably alter the lives of everyone who felt the impact. It was simply a heartbreaking story, but not my lane. My news director thought differently and had the instinct and, ultimately, the faith to force me to think differently. I was assigned this story in autumn, 2010. Little did I know then how just one story would have impacted me about as much as I feel Ed Slatterys story has the power to impact you.

Ed Slattery is all of us, the everyman. Ordinary. It is the extraordinary that forced him to pivot in order to protect what was left of his family while using grief, the complex evasiveness of forgiveness and generosity, to fuel his fight to change an industry he blames. Crashes involving large commercial trucks kill thousands of people a year in this country. To be fair, not all crashes are the fault of truckers, but there are real issues of driver fatigue and the pressure created in a pay by the mile scheme many companies employ. Since the Slatterys crash in 2010, the fatalities from large trucks on American roadways have surged, and claim more than 4,000 lives each and every year.

The problem, as Ed Slattery and other advocates see it is not the truckers themselves, rather the complex combination of the amount of hours they are allowed to drive, rest times for those drivers and work shifts designed by some motor carriers. Slatterys story and others, like the crash that injured comedian Tracy Morgan, helped make the case to study federal regulations for motor carriers. Many experts say regulations, like the ones proposed in 2012, made our roads safer by increasing the rest drivers must get between certain shifts. Those changes were ultimately scrapped as the politics of regulation versus deregulation continue to ping pong between ruling parties on Capitol Hill. Still, at every turn, politicians meet Ed Slattery, a man who has made it his lifes purpose to make our roads safer through common sense regulations.

Piecing your life back together after being shattered by such profound loss often looks like an incomplete puzzle with jaggedly shaped gaps in the picture. Ed Slattery channeled his grief and filled those spaces by weaving an incredible tapestry to honor his wife, Susan. From an advocate on Capitol Hill, to a cheerleader for his now-disabled son, and a philanthropist making his historic settlement earn good will rather than monetary interest, Slattery and his story saddens, inspires, and heals.

So yes, my goal as a journalist was not to change the world, rather inform those who can. But sometimes, just sometimes, the story is powerful enough to change the way a reporter sees the world.

When realities violently change, no matter the adjustments circumstance demands, you will always come to define life by the very last moment when it still was before what it now is; an almost visible emotional scar left by the turbulent shift of the tectonic plates that are conscience and sub-conscience.

Love. Loss.

Before. After.

With. Without her.

There is perhaps no more unwelcome sound than a screaming alarm clock at 4:30 on a Monday morning, except for maybe the ring of a phone call that shatters the life you finally got right.

Ed Slattery rolled over the spot where his wife normally slept to slam the snooze button. Lying there in the fog that just about any commuter in the Baltimore/Washington area knows, he ran through the day ahead of him against the backs of his eyelids.

Ed was an economist with the United States Department of Agriculture. In short, he worked to help determine how many acres of organic crops were grown in the U.S. each year. There were databases to format, numbers to compare and, ultimately, a weathered pair of fifty-four- year-old eyes to cross. Not the ideal trade for an adult with attention deficit disorder, but solid work for a man who always found peace in the logic and predictability of numbers.