What Will It Take to Give Victim-Advocates A Voice at USDOT? (Marianne Karth)

8:58PM Jul 28, 2025

Speakers:

Keywords:

Traffic safety

federal government

victim advocates

roadway safety

DOT position

Senator Ben Ray Lujan

Representative Steve Cohen

Mary Ann Karth

truck crash

underride guards

public comment

transportation bill

roadway ombudsman

advocacy.

Kea. Hey guys, it's Kea. Welcome back to the break. So pretty much every traffic safety advocate knows that engaging with the federal government can be pretty challenging to put it mildly, and if you came to advocacy in the wake of losing a loved one or surviving a crash yourself, it can be doubly hard to navigate trauma and grief while also trying to wade through transportation terminology you might know nothing about, or to navigate the complexities of a federal regulatory process that could make cars or trucks less likely to kill someone else's loved one, if you can just get them past the finish line. And even if you do manage to jump through all those hoops and become a bad ass victim, survivor advocate, you'll still just be one voice in the crowd, and you won't even know if anyone will hear you or if your message will get forgotten the next time the White House changes hands. But what if there was a person at us, D, o, t, whose entire job was to hear the voices of victims and survivors and help them navigate the confusing process of turning traffic safety concerns into real laws that save lives and be the champion for advocates with the direct ear to the top transportation leaders in the country. That's the vision behind the D O T victim and survivor advocate act sponsored by Senator Ben Ray Lujan and Representative Steve Cohen, which would create, for the first time, a national roadway safety advocate position within D O T itself. That position is the brain child of Mary Ann Karth, who saw firsthand why victim advocates like her need someone like this after she lost two of her daughters in a truck crash. As Karth envisions it, this position would be totally non partisan. It would carry over between administrations, and there's a great moment right now for you to voice your support for this idea, since Secretary Duffy is actually asking for public comment on the next major transportation bill which could create a position like this. I'll include a link to that comment field in the show notes, as well as a step by step guide on exactly what to say that Mary Ann has put together. But for now, let's just dig a little deeper into this great idea whose time may have finally come the national roadway safety advocate office. So yeah, here is my interview with the amazing Mary. Ann Karth, why don't you tell me, like I don't already know your story, like I'm not familiar with your amazing work. I would love to just sort of get to know you a little bit in your words. What brought you into this world of street safety advocacy that we're all in, and then we can turn a little bit towards how we came to this idea of the roadway safety advocate. What brought

me to safety advocacy was a tragedy in our family when I'm on May 4, 2013 I was headed with the three youngest of our nine children back to Texas, where we had lived. We had moved to North Carolina nine months previously, and that that Christmas, our oldest daughter had gotten engaged, and we she had set a May 11 wedding date, and four of our college kids were graduating from college with various degrees in Texas that may so we had planned a big family celebration. We got on the road on May 4, a Saturday, and when we got on i 20 in Georgia, came upon a traffic backup. I slowed down and a truck driver did not he hit our car and it spun us around so that we went backwards into the back of another tractor trailer, and the rear underride guard at the back of the truck, which is supposed to stop cars from going under, came off the back of our car went under, and my two youngest daughters, Analia, who was 17 and Mary was 13, they were sitting in the back seat, so the truck came into their part of the car, and Analia died instantly, and Mary A few days later, from her injuries, as you can see, I'm I'm here. I'm fine. Now. I was in the hospital for a few days, but because the truck didn't come into my part my survival space, I'm fine. And so that led to the whole journey of learning about underride, which I'd never heard about before that day, and that hundreds of people die from truck underwrite every year. I. The occupants of passenger vehicles, as well as vulnerable road users like pedestrians and bicyclists and motorcyclists. Because of the geometric mismatch, the bottoms of trucks are up so much higher, also that engineers have designed devices to install on trucks to prevent that from happening, but that industry has opposed it for decades, and the federal government has taken too little action to to correct the problem. So that set me and my family on a path of advocacy to try and bring about change so that a preventable death would not have to continue to happen over and over and over again.

Thank you so much for sharing that story. I know it's painful to recount, and I want to say I'm so sorry for your loss. I know it doesn't get easier over time, it gets harder, and I've lost members of my family in a similar way, and it's I just always like to take a moment for humanity, because I recognize that we're always talking victim to victim. So I do want to applaud your incredible advocacy that you have done around under right guards. You've connected me with incredible stories in this space, but I don't know that that is necessarily a common experience for a lot of victim survivors, who are often too snowed by grief, frankly, to get into this. So sort of by way of framing the problem that I think your proposal that we're going to talk about today will solve. What do victims and survivors of traffic violence actually need from agencies like us, d o, t, in the wake of these tragedies. Is it support? Is it a space to advocate for change? Is it something else, and are they getting those things like right now? Like, how did you make the leap from being a person who had endured the unimaginable to getting into the weeds of these federal policies that most people never think about a day in their lives

in the aftermath of our crash, we heard from an organization, truck safety coalition, who gave us information about truck safety and helped us get some initial meetings like with our senator, our US senator. And then just four months after our crash, I was invited to a meeting with the newly appointed Secretary of Transportation, Anthony Fox, and was able, at that time to go to DC and share my story and make an appeal to petition for stronger under eye guards. So that got me on the path. The challenge is learning about what steps a person can take to dig into this complex world of laws and regulations and policies, and it's hard to navigate on your own. I wasn't looking for a support system at the Department of Transportation, that's not their role, but looking for resources and support in the sense of helping to take the steps to work within that system and be effective at helping them really do their job of protecting the American public. And unfortunately, although I received many condolences and actually had lots of meetings that I was, you know, listened to, there was no consistent and specific person point of contact. It's been 12 years now, and I've had many different points of contact at the Department of Transportation. And really, we need somebody that's, that's what they're for. They're not there for, you know, 10 million other things, and this is just something that got added to their job description, or even just to their temporary list of to do's, but somebody that that's their, that's their purpose to two things, to listen to people like myself and be a resource, a point of contact, and give helpful information to but then to take what they hear from people like me and report it To others within the department, to let the secretary hear from us in tangible ways, in coordinated ways that can be more effective at channeling our grief and our motivation to bring about change in a more effective way,

absolutely. I mean, you sent me a blog post that you wrote a few years ago about how this idea came to you of a I think I don't know if I'm pronouncing this word right, but a roadway ombudsman, you can tell me yes, and that it sort of arose out of your own experience as a patient advocate in the medical world. Why don't you tell me a little bit about that origin story and how that. Translated to this actually becoming a bicameral bill that real lawmakers are considering right now. That's right.

So as you mentioned, when I was college graduate. I just graduated from college, and this was way back in 1977 and my first job out of college was as a VISTA volunteer, which meant basically, didn't make much money, but I was given a position as a chapter director of a nursing home patient advocacy organization. Now this was already set up as a statewide organization, and I was there to set up a chapter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, so I had the support of, you know, statewide staff, and I was trained by and connected to a Michigan State ombudsman for long term care. So that was a very valuable experience. It was very challenging, but what I did was I learned how to be an advocate for people who can't speak up for themselves, nursing home patients. I learned a lot about testifying before legislature, doing PR training, volunteers, working with the community. So then fast forward quite a few years when I found myself in the position of being a survivor, advocate of a tragedy. Then after a few years of discouraging and frustrating lack of progress, all of a sudden, one day it hit me, this could be the missing piece, an ombudsman, somebody that is there to be a resource to help people who are in that position, train them, equip them, bring them together. So an ombudsman is a term that isn't commonly used. So eventually we changed it to be national roadway safety advocate. So for quite a few years, I kept promoting that idea, pushing that idea, hoping that somebody would catch the vision, until in 2022 I was sitting down and meeting with Senator Luhan, and he sat there and he said, you know, that could work. That could work because he has interest in in roadway safety, and he's recognized the frustrations of delays that happen like in NHTSA, which is the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration. It's a, you know, a federal safety agency, but too often, doesn't really enable people like myself to help bring about effective change. So he put his staff to work on it, and worked on taking my rudimentary language and developed a legislation called the D O T victim and survivor advocate Act, which was introduced in 2024 and then again in 2025 so I'm, I'm very hopeful that this is something that could actually become reality, that could be a position within the Department of Transportation, to be somebody that'll go to bat for people like myself,

well, go to bed, and also sort of act as a explainer, a little bit too. I mean, I honestly see a lot of my role as a journalist in this way of taking these really technical procedures that we're talking about and making them emotional and urgent. But Senator Lujan produced a really great press release that you sent me that outlined exactly what this physician would do that I just thought was so good. It talks about how this is a person who could explain do T processes, procedures, scientific principles and technical information to stakeholders in plain language. I mean, just for folks who haven't actually gone through what you've gone through and done the kind of advocacy work that you've done, how challenging is it to understand how a NHTSA rule gets implemented as someone who isn't a professional in this field, why do we need a advocate to help us navigate that process as victim survivors and as just interested people in the world? So

it's, it's very complex, and if I don't, if I'm not careful, I'll forget how much I learned the hard way, you know, in in how much is just ingrained in my mind now. But like just just a small example, this week, I published a post on our website about the invitation that Secretary Duffy made for the public to make comments on what do T should do in the upcoming 2026, Surface Transportation reauthorization bill. So of course, to me, I knew how to to make a public comment. It was no, you know, no new thing. So I put a link to where somebody needs to go to do that, and one person didn't quite get it. And. And was enthusiastic and wanted to respond. But what they did was they put a comment on my website, which won't get to the secretary, Duffy. So then what I did, I put together a Google Doc, and I wrote step by step instructions about how to make a public comment. Because, like, there are things like that. Like, I asked myself, Oh, do I want to give this information? Do you know? Do I want to give my contact information? Do I want to do this? And so I tried to make it real simple for people to follow, because it is complex. And the whole rule making process is very complex. There's all these terms like ANPRM and NPRM, and

we should say, advance notice of proposed rule making, which, in and of itself, is a concept that would take us a little while to explore.

And unfortunately, the reality is that there are people who do understand this real well, and they're called industry lobbyists. They've got more power to influence what's going on, and so you probably read it in the bill text. This position this office cannot change laws or regulations or influence policy, but they can communicate to the Secretary and to people within the department what they're hearing from people like myself to help shape the policy

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I want to just deepen into that a little bit, because the way that Senator Lujan put it in his release was basically that this person is going to meet at least once a quarter with the DoD secretary to highlight the issues that folks like you and me and the many, many amazing advocates that I write about are currently bringing in, you know, not a haphazard way, but in the best ways that we're able to without that kind of, like large corporate money support, which is like a real misbalance that I think about all the time. I did want to talk about how this person would be appointed, because one thing you pointed out in your materials is that this ideally, is going to be an independent person, not a political appointee, not someone who turns over every four years, every time the President changes, or four to eight years, I should say, tell me why that's important, why it needs to be an independent role. And yeah, just a little bit about who you think this person would be

in the 12 years that I've been advocating, I've seen a lot of changes in administration, so I've seen things go back and forth at DOD. I've had a lot of different points of context, and you get this combination of the new administration that has different priorities, but then you also get the people that continue on as career people, they often have their hands tied by whatever the current administration has. So this person would be called to not be swayed by all of that going on. But again, their role is to be the voice of those who are victims or future victims, and frankly, you know, I don't want to spend the rest of my life feeling like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall. We're talking about saving lives, you know? Why should it be so difficult? Would think it would be a bipartisan goal to save lives?

You know? We're told it is all the time, and yet, we do have a hard time moving forward the kinds of policies that would save lives that you and I both want to see. So I guess I want to just wrap up by saying, What can we do to help with folks who are, you know, engaging with this? Are saying, like, I really want this to be real. I see the value. We clearly don't have DoD officials who are taking on this responsibility as seriously as they should, because people keep dying. You know, you mentioned that there is a comment period open, and you have an explainer, which I would love to link to, about how to leave an effective comment. What else can we do to push this forward and make it a position that we all can use as a resource going in the

future? So I guess there's two things. One would be to use this opportunity to make a public comment that Secretary has made a call for. He's asked for comments, and that process is the deadline for that is August 20, and specifically ask Secretary Duffy to put the plan in place for this office of national roadway safety advocate. It's not like it's the first time that that duty has heard about this idea. In fact, they provide technical assistance to Senator luhans office when he was working on the legislation. So they they're well aware that this is, this is a goal. And this is a potential, you know, if everybody can make a public comment saying they want to see this happen and then share it, you know, with their circle of influence, so that that we can get lots of people saying, we want this, we need this. And then secondly, they could let their US Senate. Directors and representatives know that they would like them to co sponsor the bill that Senator Lujan and Congressman Steve Cohen have introduced, called the DoD victim and survivor advocate act. So that would go also a long way to getting it not only asking the Secretary to move ahead with it as soon as possible, but then also getting it mandated so that it can be just taken away put in the 2026, Surface Transportation reauthorization bill.

Okay, that's our show. Thank you so much again. To my amazing guest, Marianne Karth. I've included a bunch of links to the legislation, as well as the comment period and Mary Ann's really helpful guide to how to leave an effective comment that I think you all should take a look at. It's going to be a really effective tool, not just to support this idea, but any idea that you think is really critical in the next Surface Transportation reauthorization bill. If you would like to support this show, you can do so by leaving a tax deductible contribution@usa.streetsblog.org or by just leaving us a positive review on social media, on Apple podcast, Spotify, anywhere else that you listen, or just tell a friend to check it out. The break is a production of streets vlog USA. Our theme music is eggshells by Christina Johnson. I'm your host and editor, Kea Wilson, and before I let you go, same question as always, what is one thing you have done today to help end car dependency? Let me know. Kea.