Couple saves lives by buckling up

Karren and Patrick McKinzie won an award recently but received the most precious gift — their lives — for buckling their seatbelts on June 11.

On that day, the couple was traveling from Kalispell to Missoula over Jette Hill when a vehicle pulled into their lane while turning left and stopped. Pat avoided hitting the truck dead-on at 65 mph by veering to the right on to the shoulder of the highway.

As he was about to steer back into the roadway, one of his tires caught the gravel and sent the vehicle into a skid and then a roll as it struck the ditch. Montana State Patrol’s Aaron Day described the rolls as violent, based on how far the car traveled during multiple rolls.

He calculated the force at 200,000 pounds or more by multiplying the weight of the car times the miles per hour. Because that force applied to everything in the vehicle, the luggage and most everything else loose in the car flew out the back window on the first impact.

The McKinzies had their seatbelts buckled, so they remained inside the safety of the vehicle. Many others in Montana have been ejected and killed for not taking a few seconds to fasten their seatbelts.

Happy to find them alive and buckled in the car, Day later nominated them to receive “The Saved by the Belt Award” sponsored by the Montana Department of Transportation, AAA, the Montana Sheriff’s & Peace Officers Association, the Montana Highway Patrol and Safe Kids, Montana. Day said they would not have survived the force of that accident without their seatbelts.