When we first launched Safe Driving Week, we hoped to honor our son Hunter — not only by remembering his story, but by changing the road ahead for others.

We’ve seen firsthand how powerful student voices can be. On campuses across the country, young people are stepping up, leading Safe Driving Week campaigns, and helping their classmates take the pledge not to drive distracted.

But sometimes their words do more than inspire.

Sometimes… they stop us in our tracks.

A few months ago, we heard from a student who helped organize one of those campus campaigns. He spoke about a friend he lost in a distracted driving crash during his freshman year — and how that loss changed the way he thought about road safety and personal responsibility.

What he said stayed with us:

“I want a world where our tools back us up when we make mistakes. That’s what tech should do—protect people.”

We haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Like many parents, we’ve had concerns about new driving technologies. But we also remember how Hunter’s crash — like so many others — was caused not by failure of machinery, but a moment of human distraction.

That’s why we bought an EV (electric vehicle). Not because it’s futuristic, but because it alerts us if we drift out of our lane. It slows down if a car stops suddenly ahead. It makes it harder to make a deadly mistake.

None of this replaces responsibility.

But it does reinforce it.

If we have tools that can save lives, we should use them.

Because no one should lose a child the way we lost ours.