Thank you first and foremost to everyone who shared their stories with me, especially the courageous men and women of Families for Safe Streets, Amy Cohen, Latanya Byrd, Amy Tam-Liao and Hsi-Pei Liao, and Kristi Finney. My empathy for you, especially after having children of my own, was the inspiration for this book.
Thank you to Charles T. Brown, who wrote the foreword to this book and served as an advisor on the project. He knows his stuff, and everyone should listen to him.
Thank you to my wonderful editor at Island Press, Heather Boyer. Thank you to Kathleen Lafferty and to everyone who had a hand in copyediting and layout. The whole organization was a dream to work with.
Thank you to my long-time editor at Streetsblog, Ben Fried; to Gersh Kuntzman; and to publisher Mark Gorton and everyone with whom I worked who supported my work there over nine years, which was the basis for much of this book. Thank you to our readers who supported me and taught me so much there as well.
Thank you to Anne Trubek at Belt Publishing, who served as an unpaid literary agent on this project just because she is awesome. Thank you to Aaron Naparstek, who came up with the title for this book when Heather and I could not think of anything snappy enough.
Thank you to my mother, Sarah Hartley, who proofread all my high school papers—and hated them! She proofread some early chapters of this book only to have me reject all the changes. (Sorry, Mom!) Thank you to my husband, who, as cliché as it sounds, is my biggest supporter and confidant in both my life and career.
Thank you to Neil Arason and Robert Schneider, two of the unsung heroes from the world of traffic safety, who helped me track down answers to some of my research questions throughout this process, and to David Zuby at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.