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SALT LAKE CITY — The lives of the Call and Caldwell families changed forever on June 7, 2021.
That's the day that Emma Call and Payton Caldwell, both 18 years old, were traveling from Heber to Deer Creek Reservoir when a man driving a construction vehicle rear-ended a Jeep, causing a fiery collision that killed the two friends.
Emma's brother Isaac Call told the story Tuesday during the 2021 Teen Memoriam at the Marmalade Branch of City Library in Salt Lake City, an event sponsored by Zero Fatalities, a program of the Utah Department of Transportation, in honor of the 33 Utah teens who lost their lives in car accidents in 2021.
The nationwide campaign focuses on preparing teens to be safe on roads, emphasizing the importance of education, experience and parental involvement.
We can do better. We can make better choices. It's all of us.
–Carlos Braceras, UDOT executive director
Zero Fatalities distributes resources to driver education classes, which include an assignment for teens to find and learn about car accidents that claimed the lives of their peers.
Kristen Hoschouer, Zero Fatalities program manager, said she hears from driver education teachers that teens relate to and learn more from stories they find themselves.
"It's very moving for them to hear these stories from people who are just like them," she said.
Emma Call was one of those teens.
Isaac Call described his sister as "a bright light to everybody that she interacted with." Emma Call, he said, was "full of joy and happiness," and had a way of lightening any tense family moments that came along.
"She's happy, she's caring and she's lovely," Isaac Call said, remembering the life of his sister. "And that ... I think affected everybody, no matter who it was."
Isaac Call pleaded with drivers everywhere to pay attention to their surroundings. It can be easy to get distracted, he said, but "everything else can wait" when driving.
His sentiment was echoed by Carlos Braceras, executive director of the Utah Department of Transportation. He said 39 teen drivers were involved in fatal crashes in 2021, and, of those 39 drivers, 27 weren't at fault.
"Let me be clear about this," Braceras said. "They were victims of somebody else's reckless behavior. ... We can do better. We can make better choices. It's all of us."
Utah Highway Patrol Capt. Wade Bruer said honoring Utah's teen driver fatalities means committing to avoiding bad driving habits and he encouraged parents to foster good driving behavior in their kids.
Bruer said teens with parents who monitor their activities in "a helpful and supportive way" are half as likely to speed, 70% less likely to drink and drive, two times more likely to wear seatbelts and 30% less likely to talk on their phones while driving.
He said something he's practiced with his own kids is "commentary driving." As they're driving, Bruer said to ask teens to describe what they're seeing on the road — are they noticing pedestrians or the cars stopped ahead of them?
"That will help them to develop those good behaviors that we're talking about that make our roads safer," he said.
Correction: A previous version said that Emma Call and Payton Caldwell were traveling from Beaver when they were killed in a crash; they were traveling from Heber.
