Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#35: Jacy Good and Steve Johnson at NSC 2019
64 Plays6 years ago
Jill James, Chief Safety Officer, and podcast host talks with Jacy Good and Steve Johnson about their story, Hang Up and Drive, as well as what it’s like to be married public speakers on the road together.
Recommended
Transcript
Live Podcast Introduction
00:00:11
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro live at the 2019 National Safety Congress and Expo in sunny San Diego. My name is Jill James, Vivid's Chief Safety Officer, and today I'm joined by J.C. Goode and Steve Johnson, road safety advocates and founders of Hang Up and Drive. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks.
Tragic Accident and Aftermath
00:00:31
Speaker
So Hang Up and Drive, how did that get it started? Oh boy. What does it mean? That's you. Start us off.
00:00:40
Speaker
When I was driving home from my college graduation with my parents 11 years ago, a driver talking on his cell phone, speaker phone. He thinks he's doing everything right. His hands are on the wheel. He gets to a red light and he stops. He was looking out the windshield, but then was so distracted by this cell phone conversation. He turned left through the red light
00:01:04
Speaker
As a result, an 18-wheeler swerved trying to miss him and unfortunately hit my family's car. Both of my parents were killed on impact. I wasn't breathing, a coincidence of a paramedic living nearby a hospital right down the road, keeping me alive and helping me to fight through months of surgeries and rehabilitation and getting my life back.
Birth of Advocacy: Hang Up and Drive
00:01:35
Speaker
Us hang up and drive Yeah, I guess the short version of how we got to found hang up and drive is
00:01:48
Speaker
After the crash, I guess we should establish that we were a couple from the very beginning of freshman year of college. So this is now graduation day, and we have life planned. Right. So not only are you founders of this business, but you were a couple before what happened to your family, Jason. Yeah. So as she slowly healed over months and really years, but especially those first critical months, she just wanted to do something about distracted driving. This was the thing that caused this horrible
00:02:24
Speaker
And she tried to get laws passed in Pennsylvania where this happened and that just got her name out there and she kept fighting and fighting and fighting and The big turning point was JC was wearing a sign on her back. You want to talk about that quick?
00:02:39
Speaker
I was 21 years old and I walked with a cane and I had half my body not really working and people would stare at me like in a really uncomfortable kind of way. People would stop me and say, what happened to you? Or what's wrong with you? I was like, okay. Humanity. So interesting. So I wouldn't, I couldn't keep it short. It was, I had to tell them someone on a cell phone did this to me. Yeah. And I kind of got sick of
00:03:08
Speaker
answering the question. I thought it was just as easy to put it on my back. So what did the sign on your back say? My handicaps were caused by a driver on his cell phone. The other two people in the car were killed. Please.
00:03:23
Speaker
hang up and drive. So that got some local media attention around where we were then living with my parents, which happened about six months after she was out of the hospital. We moved because we kind of needed that support. So it got local New York media attention and it built and built and built and eventually she was on the Oprah Winfrey show and after that
00:03:46
Speaker
we realized maybe giving speaking engagements, presentations was a way we could really make change, just change people's behaviors instead of changing the laws.
00:03:59
Speaker
And so that's when we thought of hang up and drive. And that was 2010.
Personal Motivations and Challenges
00:04:05
Speaker
And that ball has been rolling ever since. And to be fair, we didn't really think of hang up and drive. My dad had a bumper sticker that said hang up and drive. No way. Wow. Before, you know, everyone on the cell phone, my dad always taught me driving is dangerous. You got to pay attention. Yeah. Don't be on your phone. Back in the days when phones were
00:04:25
Speaker
Nothing. Right, right. Hang up and drive. So the inspiration came from your dad. How wonderful is that? So, Jaycee, when you're recovering,
00:04:38
Speaker
At what point did you get this drive? Was it immediate? I've got to be an advocate? What stirred in you to say, I really have to do this? And you and Steve came together and said, OK, we're going to make this happen. I think the first inspiration was the fact that no one was punished.
00:04:58
Speaker
Two people broke laws from running a red light and swerving to the wrong side of the road, as this tractor trailer did. But because there were no laws about cell phones and driving in Pennsylvania at the time, the district attorney determined that no one was responsible for killing my parents. And that kind of didn't add up to me. Yeah. And so I first started trying to get a law passed. That got my name out. And then it was your high school, right?
00:05:28
Speaker
It was the very first place we spoke, just neighbors talking to neighbors. God, it's into his high school and it was really, it felt good. It was terrifying because public speaking is terrifying.
00:05:40
Speaker
It was a scary first endeavor, but we got through it and felt really, really good afterwards and knew we could put our lives into
First Speaking Engagements
00:05:48
Speaker
this. It was just us reading off of note cards, basically. And the two of you did it together the first time at your high school, Steve? Yeah, right off the bat. At that point, it was in part because I was still so injured physically and emotionally. I really was not able to talk about it on my own.
00:06:03
Speaker
for the length of a high school class period. And beyond that, there were three months of my life that I couldn't remember in that hospital where Steve was there by my side and could fill in those memories. So you had said you were on your way to college graduation, right? Did you both graduate at the same time? Same day. So what were your degrees?
00:06:28
Speaker
My degree was in international studies and German studies. I had two majors. My job was with Habitat for Humanity. I would live in New York City. I would learn how to build houses. I'd be part of kind of like the environmental, you know, making sure there's nothing terrible in these houses that's going to harm the people moving into them or harm our environment in the process. It was through the organization AmeriCorps.
00:06:55
Speaker
So I think, am I remembering right? I would earn $11,000 for the whole year of living in New York City. There was no housing stipend either. I think that was it. So basically you would have had two more jobs at least. Yeah. OK.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, what about you, Steve? What was your? I was about as far opposite as you can get. My two majors were business or international business and finance. And I had a job lined up for after graduation at a bank that was sort of near where I lived. So I could live with my parents in New York, save money. This bank was in Connecticut. Yeah.
00:07:35
Speaker
And that was sort of at least the plan, you know? She was gonna be in Brooklyn for at least a year, and I was an hour away or so, and we could see each other on the weekends, and, you know, we certainly knew- You would propose, right? Well, you know, there's rules, like, no, yeah. You know, we certainly talked about that stuff.
00:07:53
Speaker
There were no hard plans, but we certainly expected to stay a couple and to figure it out in the real world after a college campus is very much a bubble and we made it work there. So we were ready for that.
00:08:14
Speaker
Part of why our story, her story, but I guess it's our story, is so awful is because this crash was on the way home from college graduation. That's one of the things that gets media attention, let's say. And it's true that that's horrible, but it also put us in a place where
00:08:32
Speaker
We just didn't start those jobs, you know? We just, I could be in the hospital every single day for four months with her. And we didn't have to, we just called these companies and said, I'm sorry, this happened. They obviously were okay. We were not going to be working for them. And it put us in a position where we could focus on different things that were more important at that time. Yes, yes, of course. Wow, what a way to start graduation.
00:09:02
Speaker
just like the mechanics of it you didn't have really have that first job so how did you have health insurance you know I mean we right I mean that's a thing incredible story right it was 2008 so my dad could not insure me unless I was a student so my insurance ended graduation day yeah my dad called me
00:09:27
Speaker
A month before graduation and said it's a month before your job starts in July after you graduate. Do you want me to buy you health insurance for that month just in case anything happens? Yeah. And I said.
00:09:39
Speaker
I'm healthy. I'll be fine. You said what every college... Don't worry about it. Right. Thank you. Everything in the universe, my dad did not listen to me. My dad bought that health insurance and... The policy started the day of the crash. Saved us a lifetime of debt. Right.
00:09:58
Speaker
We were told that that first hospital, she was in the hospital, regular hospital for two months. One of those is ICU and one of them was a regular care floor. We were told that that would have been $2 million. And then the rehab hospital for another two months would have been a million dollars. So that's just, that's Jay Good looking down on us from heaven. Yeah, wow.
Global Road Safety Laws
00:10:21
Speaker
Wow.
00:10:21
Speaker
And I was still on my parents' insurance, I forget. My mom had a company or a plan, whatever it was, that I was allowed to stay on. And then when Obamacare finally happened, maybe that was 2010, a couple years after, her company could insure me until I was 30, and I'm only 33. So I was on my mom's insurance until I was 30, which was great.
00:10:40
Speaker
I think, you know, thank goodness now, I, because we're self-employed, I'm on, what is it? The exchange, whatever you want to call it, newyorkstateofhealth.com that I go to, board, and it's expensive. I hate it. But it matters. It does matter. I mean, and this is real life stuff, right? I mean,
00:10:59
Speaker
Here you are about to set your life out I mean everyone who's graduating from college and is looking for you know thinking about all those things their biggest decision is Does the company have health insurance and which plan should I take and what's a premium and figuring it out? And you're like, this is all dumped on you a whole life restart Including all those things. So as you've been doing this business together for now how many years? Mm-hmm
00:11:26
Speaker
I mean we've been getting speeches since our first six speeches were in 2010. Wow. We maybe actually incorporated the end of 2011 or something like that. Yeah, yeah. So I'm curious, have you used those college degrees? Have you delivered your, what you talk about in German? Not yet, okay.
00:11:51
Speaker
Have I used my college degree? I wouldn't say specifically, but because we went to a liberal arts college, I know so much of what I use in creating and presenting came from the classes and the skills I learned in classes that maybe aren't related to public speaking or driver safety.
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, and did that finance degree come in handy as a founder of a business? Yeah, a little bit. But I sort of would echo what she said. I feel just the general growth of having gone through college and all that means is more of what makes me the adult that I am now. Yeah, you guys kind of had a fast on-ramp to adulting.
00:12:33
Speaker
So with regard to being road safety advocates and some of the things that you're talking about now, I know you have some particular big points that you're trying to share with audiences when you're speaking with them now. And I know one of them has to do with cognitive demands on the brain. Can you speak more to what that is and what kind of message you want people to know about?
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean anything that sounds like a distraction is a distraction. Distraction has existed since cars were invented and all of a sudden we have more people dying on our roads than have died in the last many decades because why? The thing that's changed is that we all have a computer in our pocket and we're being urged to use them because it's built into the car and we're told it's safe.
00:13:22
Speaker
But you look at the science, you look at what the National Safety Council has been collecting for decades. We know there's no improvement in our ability to drive safely if I have phones in our hands or it's coming through the speakers.
00:13:41
Speaker
stick shift car isn't making us crash. You know, one hand on the wheel is generally okay. But you talk about what goes on in our brains and we can't do it all. It's one of the big things. We're maybe the biggest, at least science part of what we're trying to get across to our audiences is that we've just kind of been misled to believe that Bluetooth
00:14:04
Speaker
is the solution. Actually, and they've looked at this a million times, there's so many studies we can point to.
00:14:12
Speaker
you're only 0.5% safer using Bluetooth versus holding the phone. So in either of those situations, a person is four times more likely to crash than if you were just paying attention and driving. That's the same as driving at the 0.08 blood alcohol content. So you see somebody talking on the phone, which we all see every time we're in the car, even if it's on Bluetooth, that person is essentially driving at the legally drunk limit. This is a pretty good buzzed driver.
00:14:41
Speaker
And when you look around the world, there's a lot of countries that they've been on top of this. And the science has been there, as JC said, for a long time. I think maybe here it's just being suppressed. Maybe there's lobbyists involved. There's a lot of money. They're selling us Bluetooth devices. So laws are different in different countries. There are places we need people. Yeah, talk about that.
00:15:04
Speaker
So like within our country, it's state by state, and it really varies. There are still states in this country that have no regulation regarding cell phones and driving, which is terrifying. But you start to look around the country, around the world. What do we know? We met a man from Singapore. He was just talking about the enforcement that you know, if you use your phone in any capacity, you will
00:15:30
Speaker
Be ticketed. You will be fined. And that includes Bluetooth. It is illegal to use even Bluetooth in Singapore. And he said people obey that law because it's very strictly enforced. What else? You're better at this part. Well, I think Japan is another one. Portugal, we know, is one.
00:15:45
Speaker
and more and more countries are moving in that direction. I think maybe Sweden is moving that way too. Oh, and the UK, the UK is falling apart with Brexit right now, but they're also moving to get a complete handheld and hands-free ban for all drivers. It's just, it's less politically toxic there than it is here. Because they're paying attention to the, they're listening to the signs. Yeah. Yeah.
Language and Responsibility in Road Safety
00:16:07
Speaker
Interesting. There are some countries where they treat it like drunk driving. You could actually be arrested for using your phone behind the wheel. Within our country, I want to say there's,
00:16:14
Speaker
35-ish states. There's a bunch of states that outlaw everything if you're under 18 or under 21 for young drivers, which it's a step in the right direction, but it feels like if we're protecting our young people in that way, why doesn't that apply to me? Right, right, right, absolutely.
00:16:32
Speaker
Fascinating, thanks for sharing that piece on the research. I think that'll be, I bet people's eyes kind of open up to that when you give that statistic on, what'd you say, 0.5% better? 0.5% is the only difference you're making by using Bluetooth. It's the one thing you can guarantee after every one of our corporate events.
00:16:51
Speaker
An adult is going to walk up to us and say, I had no idea, and you've changed my mind. Yeah. There's a lot of research with MRI scans looking at where the activity in our brain is happening. We need our brains to drive a car, whether we pay attention to that or not. Then you add in another task, talking about the idea of multitasking, which scientists say our brains can't do. When we do two things at once, our brain hops back and forth between those two things.
00:17:21
Speaker
talking on the phone, trying to drive a car, it's almost 40% less activity in your brain associated with the road. So you basically become blind to things that are right in front of you. So something else that gets under, it sounds like your skin and under, well, many safety professional skin is we don't like to use the word accident.
00:17:46
Speaker
and many of us don't believe in accidents. This podcast is called the Accidental Safety Pro, which that accidental piece is intended to be a pun by way of how you found your way into this industry, which applies to you as well with an actual event that happened. But yeah, talk about why you don't like to use the word accident and what you're using in its place.
00:18:13
Speaker
For me, what happened to me wasn't an accident. Someone made the choice to use his phone and drive. And that choice led to the death of two people. I didn't use my phone when I drove because my parents taught me not to. They taught me it was dangerous. And I think looking at the way we talk about it, if you call it an accident, all of a sudden
00:18:37
Speaker
no one's responsible again there's no accountability we're not responsible for our own actions and so i think if we say we use crash most of the time in place of it collision wreck even i guess maybe if you talk to like in the safety industry they say a wreck applies to a
00:18:57
Speaker
boat, I wanna say, but I still... Oh, right. Yeah, I think you're... Yeah, okay. She used the word wreck in a presentation and afterwards a real grammar stickler came up and said, you know, wreck is really only for boats. There's always one in like every, I don't know, five audiences or something. Who can track that? But it's just not, you know, it's not a whoopsie situation. Yeah, right.
00:19:22
Speaker
Statistically, they say 94% of all crashes are caused by some form of human error. It's choices. It's choices to drive too fast, or to drink, or to use drugs, or to use your phone, whatever it is. We're responsible. Humans need to take. And you hear it on the radio, you're listening to the traffic report, and there's an accident here, there's an accident there, and it just starts to feel like there's no blame.
00:19:46
Speaker
to be put out in the world and I just think it's unfair to do that. I think we need to use the word crash. And I think you can read a little bit of the history and look back in automotive history and cars were killing people and people were scared of the automotive industry and they didn't want cars. So the automotive industry said, oh,
00:20:08
Speaker
It's not a car crash. It's an accident. And all of a sudden, they're not responsible. We're not responsible. So there was a whole movement by the industry to kind of change the way we talk about it. Like back in the way back machine? Way back. Interesting. Interesting. That's fascinating. So it's a choice that people make agree completely. And there's a ripple effect with choices that people make. How do you share
00:20:34
Speaker
what that is because you know audiences are listening and you know as you said people say you know what happened to you what's wrong with you why are you like that that's just this immediate thing but there's so much more as we're starting to hear from both of your stories together talk about how do you share this ripple effect
00:20:53
Speaker
The fact that we're up there together, that Steve is such a big part of this ripple in his entire family and people I had never even met up to that point who were so deeply impacted. But talking about it, I show a photo of my family together and then think of all the people connected. Think of all the people who care about you who might be impacted if something happened to you. From my brother planning funerals or
00:21:21
Speaker
My mom being the beloved 8th grade English teacher. Next day is Monday. Mrs. Goode has 314 year olds coming to the middle school. That face isn't there and how many hundreds of her students and her fellow teachers who are her best friends have to go on and get through the rest of that school year and how many lives are impacted.
00:21:46
Speaker
by a tragedy like this. It goes back to our very first presentation. We were trying to figure out, you know, we were asked to speak at my high school and we agreed, even though we were kind of terrified of it. And I guess we approached it as a college
00:22:01
Speaker
like assignment because that's all we knew so yeah we were like what's our like thesis what's our real big idea yeah and we thought of the ripple effect and we made a note card of all the people you know we listed names and then there's husbands and wives of those people and then there's children and then there was all the co-workers and we had we were holding this list that we
00:22:21
Speaker
believed had over a thousand names. We didn't have names because there's all these students of her mom, et cetera. But we figured it's at least a thousand people impacted by this one crash on one day.
00:22:34
Speaker
But that's just one crash. And there's all these crashes every single day. So in the presentation, it's tough to use numbers on this issue because we know it's under reported. We don't have the real numbers of deaths for cell phone use. So we use a middle-ish number, which is 15 deaths a day. We know the injuries are around 1,100 people a day. And we talk about that a little bit.
00:22:58
Speaker
But then we like to bring it back around at the end of the presentation. But that person has a loved one. And we have these faces on the screen. We know some of these people. And that girl's dad told her a million times that we don't text and drive. But she was texting. And she went over the double yellow line. And she got killed. And now there's a father who has to live forever thinking maybe I could have done more. And we started thinking about that.
00:23:26
Speaker
So it's not 15 deaths and 1,100 injuries. It's 15 deaths, 1,100 injuries, and everybody who cares about those people. So if people don't change the way they drive, at some point we're all going to be impacted by something like this because of that ripple effect.
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, in your case, ripple effect can even be so much as, you know, AmeriCorps and what you're going to do with Habitat for Humanity didn't get to experience your gift. And the job that you had agreed to do, same thing. I mean, it just, it spreads so far, so far.
00:23:57
Speaker
And so my call to action is always instead of starting one of these ripples of pain. You're involved in that somehow. What if you did the opposite? What if when you sat down in the car, you're like, all right, I'm gonna be nice today. Yeah, you know, let people merge. I'm gonna go with the speed limit. I'm gonna put my seatbelt on. I'm gonna do all these things that we all know we should do. Yeah. Different ripple. Yeah. Yeah. And I gotta say we've spoken
00:24:23
Speaker
over a thousand different places. We hear stories every single place we go because people are being impacted. So you said thousands of places you've spoken. All over the world? Three countries. Just three countries, yeah. Wow. What is it? I think our 40th state will be next month with our first Vermont speech. Coming up on Vermont for state number 40.
00:24:49
Speaker
and then some Canada events and some European stuff just in the Netherlands. So you talked about that first speaking event at your high school and you approached it like you had your thesis statement and this is like an assignment we're going to go through. How did what you do together as a couple presentation wise, how did that evolve for you?
Evolving Presentations
00:25:13
Speaker
Did you figure out and practice something? Did you hone it? What was that piece like for you? I think it changes every single time we do it, just based on who the audience is. After that first speech, we went, we got trained by the National Safety Council. We've done a whole lot of webinars and learned everything we can learn about this issue so that our data is always as up to date as it can possibly be. And speaking to a room full,
00:25:42
Speaker
all girls high school is a little different than speaking to a room full of truck drivers for the local grocery store and just figure out
00:25:50
Speaker
what to play on to get people's emotions really wrapped up in this to try and inspire a change. We knew we wanted to do it together. Well, there was no choice, really. Not just physically, but her brain took a long time to get back to the person she is now, which is essentially the person she was before, but it took a really long time.
00:26:13
Speaker
Short-term memory especially was was bad back then so we knew she couldn't do this all on her own Yeah, so we broke it up and back in the day those early couple years I did a higher percentage of the speaking than she did even though she's sort of the quote-unquote star of the show yeah, and then as she kind of came back and got more More confidence. She was always confident. Just just got better and
00:26:38
Speaker
Got my voice back. Yeah. Then we shifted some of what I was talking about back to her. And I'd say now the split is maybe 60, 40, something like that in her favor. But yeah, as she said, we're always tweaking. We're always trying to be better. Adding new research as new research comes out.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, and we now incorporate, you know, JC was in an AT&T PSA that came out about three years ago. And that went viral. That had over 300 million views on social media. So we didn't use it for the first
00:27:16
Speaker
12 months plus probably, but now that's in every presentation and we got immediate great feedback and regret it not having used it for the 12 months that we didn't use it, but whenever we find something that works, we stick with it. Even just stupid jokes. We're always trying to keep it as light as we can because it's a very heavy subject. Right. So I was wondering to tell, so you're stating statistics, but you're telling such a personal, personal story.
00:27:46
Speaker
How do you keep your energy? What do you do to get yourself ready to do that, to tell that personal story? How do you recover afterward? Like what's that like for you both to
Coping with Emotional Toll
00:28:01
Speaker
do? For me, it's always emotionally draining. It's difficult to tell. You're better at, I guess I've gotten better. It's kind of compartmentalizing that you can say this is a story
00:28:14
Speaker
And on one part of your brain, you know it's about you, but on the other part, you're teaching a lesson. And you can focus on that, that you're teaching a lesson. For me, the inspiration comes from the people that I get to talk to afterwards and say, this changed me. I shared this with my wife, with my daughter. And maybe the other part is that summers are really quiet for us, that we mostly speak in high schools at this point. And so over the summer, it is,
00:28:41
Speaker
time in nature, it's being on a lake in New Hampshire and stop checking the news feeds and don't read all the articles about cell phones because you just got to be able to turn it off sometimes. Ground yourself and recharge. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. And a lot of caffeine also. I think there are days when it hits harder, you know? Yeah. We find ourselves speaking on the anniversary of the crash a lot of the time.
00:29:09
Speaker
Because the crash was May 18th and a lot of high schools want us before graduation number four prom So we're speaking a lot on that day or her parents birthday. It's just things like that. Yeah Where I'm looking at the photo on our PowerPoint and I'm like That's JC's car like JC was in that car she came out of that car. Yeah, and then it hits a little harder But you know we have done it over a thousand times and so there is a natural
00:29:38
Speaker
numbing I guess to it but yeah the focus on we can accomplish something important right now if we give this speech well yeah is maybe the the real key yeah so what's it like being uh colleagues and and part life partners and how does that work for you I mean it sounds like you probably spend a lot of time in
Working and Traveling as a Couple
00:30:02
Speaker
Lots of modes of transportation, small quarters, hotel rooms. Yeah. How's that work for your relationship? We're lucky to get along. You still like each other. Yeah. I mean, in the early days it was hard and we'd find like, oh, we're bickering a lot. Oh, we need a little time apart. Yeah. And so how do you make space for that? You know what we do? We get two beds in almost every hotel room we travel for, you know?
00:30:28
Speaker
We sleep together at home like a normal married couple, whatever. It's a normal? Do married couples sleep together? I know they do, but like so many. Apparently. There's a high percentage that don't. Right, because there's the whole snoring thing. I know. My dad was on the couch like my entire life because of his horrible snoring.
00:30:46
Speaker
We started getting separate beds, which just, it's nice. You just feel like even in a hotel room that has not a suite, you just have a room, you just have your own little space. And we are traveling a lot, you know? She puts up with my podcasts in the car. We make sure when we're traveling for work, it's almost never only work.
00:31:06
Speaker
So you get a little bit of fun when you're in San Diego and you can walk down to Balboa Park and have fun together and not just be work colleagues. Crushing it at work. I think we try to think of every trip as a potential mini-vacation. We're here in San Diego now and we've had some fun and we will have a little bit left before we leave tomorrow. Our next trip
00:31:30
Speaker
You know, our next flight trip at least is later this month. We're going to be speaking in Knoxville, Tennessee, but her friend lives in Nashville. And so we're going to spend three extra nights with her friend, just a mini vacation there. Taking some music. Yeah. Yeah. We do that stuff literally every time we possibly can.
00:31:46
Speaker
With purpose, I do that when I travel as well. I'm not just going to go back and forth from the work to the hotel to have a meal and back to the hotel again. I'm in a place, regardless of where it is, there's got to be something I've not seen before, something to experience, something to fill you up for a place to recharge.
00:32:07
Speaker
This girl is good at TripAdvisor and things like that. She finds the best parks you've never heard of and cool stuff to do. I'm always a little unwilling to do it and I say yes because I have to. And then you're happy you did? And then I'm always happy you did. So you're the itinerary planner as well, JC, and the fun finder.
00:32:30
Speaker
So balance-wise, introvert-extrovert, are you both the same or one or the other? I never know how to answer this question. What am I? I think we're both introverts. Yeah, socially I am, I guess.
00:32:42
Speaker
which makes an event like this where we're trying to schmooze with people. We just suck at it, to be honest. It's not natural to make small talk. When I sit down one-on-one with someone, I'm fine. Yeah, when you're in a booth and trying to reach out to strangers. That's the scary part. Right, right. My life partner is an introvert, and he also has a very public job in pastoral work.
00:33:07
Speaker
and so I'm like how does that like how do you get in front of these groups to do he's like introverts actually really good this because we have a job we have a purpose yeah and he says the same thing you bring me to a cocktail party and he's like don't leave me
00:33:21
Speaker
What? You get in front of audiences all the time and he goes, yeah, but that's my job. Like, I know my job. I know my role. Like, make small talk. And he, you know, well, comes unglued, makes him nervous. So sounds like he might say anything. Yeah, cocktail party. We're like, I'm like, Jace, pretend to have small talk with me so I don't feel so awkward. You're both introverts. Yeah.
00:33:44
Speaker
So it's important that you find that way to recharge yourselves. You really need to do it to be quiet in your minds and with your bodies to be able to recharge, to do it again and again. I couldn't imagine, when I step back to think about it, we would have had, quote unquote, normal jobs, and whatever that meant, and a normal life, and maybe we'd have kids by now, and we don't know if we want to do that at all at this point, which is not sure.
00:34:14
Speaker
She said it yesterday after we gave our speech here. I'm just so happy we have this life.
Vision for Road Safety Impact
00:34:21
Speaker
It's horrible that we have to do this, that we have this story to tell. But the fact that we get to do this with the people, the person we love the most in the world and get to travel and meet new people and eat good food.
00:34:36
Speaker
have a great work-life balance. If I could trade it, I would trade it. But the fact that I can't, I couldn't be happier with the situation that we have. So what's next for you guys? Thousand in, are there specific, do you have specific goals or you talked about laws and changing and you speak mostly in high schools, are there different audiences or are you letting
00:35:05
Speaker
Life unfolds as it unfolds. I know that life unfolds. For me, this problem is seemingly continuing to get worse. Our phones are getting smarter and they can do more things than ever. And we keep doing all of those things while we're driving a car. I want to see there's a big movement, Vision Zero movement.
00:35:26
Speaker
I want there to be no more deaths because of these choices. It's a big dream, but I like to think in my lifetime maybe I'll get to see it. But other than that, let it unfold, right?
00:35:38
Speaker
Yeah, life-wise. I mean, business-wise, you know, next month, Vermont, state 40, means you got 10 left, so that, you know, I just love trying to hit those stupid little landmarks or milestones. I have the same thing with this podcast, by the way. I want all 50 states represented and the territories. And I'm not there yet, and so you represent which state, so I can put this on my map. I'm sure you've done New York before.
00:36:05
Speaker
yes documentary filmmaker yes but okay so now i have three guests from new york okay we would definitely want to do more international work we had such great experiences i think we've done maybe 10 high schools in a in a conference in canada and a couple corporate things in the netherlands and all went fantastically and just i think there's so much more opportunity for us out there and
00:36:30
Speaker
And then I want people to stop dying. I want to stop having people like her parents die, people like her injured, and people like me affected. And it's so frustrating when I think of how much of it is preventable and how much pain there is in the world. Well, and how many of us know people? I mean, this isn't like, oh, gee, I've never talked to somebody this has happened to before. I think it's getting to such an epidemic that we all can
00:37:00
Speaker
We don't have to think too hard to think about someone we know. You know, like right now in my little community where I live, I know parents who lost their son to the same thing and just were influential in changing the law in my home state of Minnesota. And so I think we all know someone. And so what's the holdup with
00:37:26
Speaker
taking an action. When it impacts the ripple effect is impacting all of us. So we're here at NSC and you spoke
00:37:37
Speaker
Yesterday. Yes. Yeah. So how is how is that? How is your message received? We were happy, you know any event where you you don't know how many people are gonna show up Yeah, that's sort of the biggest thing. You know, we know what we're doing. We're giving them the speech a million times So we're not like we're nervous for the speech. We're always just nervous to see how many people show up. But yeah, we had will over a hundred people and
00:38:00
Speaker
And being at the National Safety Council, you have a pretty good idea. You're going to get people who are preaching to the choir. Right. These people know a lot of what you're going to say. But that means you've got to push that much harder. And this morning we met a man who's 65 years old. He lives in 32 years.
00:38:18
Speaker
of going to driver safety presentations. We were the first ones to make him cry. Wow. Which is not what I'm going for. Or maybe it is. Maybe it is. But he was just saying how impactful it was for him more so than anything else he's seen and how such a big inspiration for us that
00:38:34
Speaker
Alright, we've got something special and we've got to keep sharing and keep working on this. So many fathers came up to us, both yesterday after the speech and this morning at the booth, just to say, like, I can't wait to share this with my daughter or my granddaughter even. And that's just, I don't know, it's a huge compliment.
00:38:53
Speaker
Not every day for us is great. There are days where we're giving 10 speeches in a week and we're exhausted. But then you hear a message like that and it really recharges your boundaries. So what's the most common question that you get from an audience and what's the most annoying question you get from an audience?
00:39:16
Speaker
Well, as she said, so we do... I think last year we did about 125 events. I would say like 90 to 100 of those are high schools and then the rest is corporate and some other stuff that we do. So we're mostly getting high school questions. Yeah. And they're fantastic. They're just... Yeah, what, like... A lot of them want to know more about our personal story. They'll want to know how I proposed, you know, fun, things like that. What else you got?
00:39:42
Speaker
I mean, I think the most common one is if I've ever met the young man who was on his phone. Yeah. Get that one a lot, which I have not. He's never taken responsibility for having done anything wrong. And he is dealing with his own personal ripple effect. I'm sure this impacts him. Yeah, right. But unfortunately, I don't know anything more about what his life is.
00:40:09
Speaker
sometimes we just get like hey what's your favorite color really or you know what we know we get is you know the first picture of us in the presentation is from like 2004 it's like when we met basically shortly after we'd started dating and I've got this like beautiful head of hair
00:40:27
Speaker
Did you have the flow going on? I had a nice wavy whatever. Like long enough that he could touch it. Not in that photo at least. Anyway so some kid will raise his hand and be like hey what happened to your hair? I'll be like screw you kid. It's falling out it's turning gray. Oh my gosh you guys are still really young. That's funny.
00:40:52
Speaker
Yeah, what other, well, okay, so annoying question, but other bizarro questions besides your hair. How did you propose? Favorite color? Every once in a while we get a question that we've never had before.
Audience Interaction and Questions
00:41:04
Speaker
I wish I could remember the last one. One happened at a high school at the end of this school year. Okay. And we were like, we've never gotten that question before.
00:41:13
Speaker
I have no idea what it was, but that's always really exciting because we've now done, I don't know, 800 high schools, whatever it is, over the years. So to get something new is exciting. A lot of times we'll get asked how tall we are.
00:41:27
Speaker
In part because I picked up my wedding dress on Say Yes to the Dress. And so we have a picture of that in there and when you're trying your wedding dress on they have you stand up on a little platform. So it's a picture of me next to Randy and the consultants at this bridal shop. But you can't see the platform. You can't see the platform and I'm two feet tall. So you look really tall. You know the way they ask you, it's like how tall are you? Is the way they phrase the question. Oh that sounds like a fun question.
00:41:54
Speaker
You know what, because we get a lot of the same questions, we've got some of their kind of canned responses, but we've got some really solid jokes. And nothing is more gratifying than making a room full of 17-year-olds actually genuinely laugh at something. I feel like it's hard to do. So are you gonna have kids someday?
00:42:11
Speaker
I still don't know if I want kids, but I enjoy making 17-year-olds left. That's all I'm saying. I'm trying to get you to make your joke. Oh, yeah. She's feeding you. You know, because my pelvis was shattered. So I make sure the kids know, like, we had this plan. We were going to have kids, and I don't know if physically my body will be able to do that. So still kind of the jury is out right now. And I'll say, like, so, you know, we don't know if we want kids or not. But if we do, if it's a natural birth, great.
00:42:38
Speaker
If not, you know, a surrogate, adoption, garage sale, whatever. And it's a guaranteed laugh every single time. And so we've done it every time we're asked. Like, when I hear the start of that question, which is usually, do you have kids? Because we don't make it clear in the presentation. I get, like, a little excitement in the back of my brain. I'm like, yes, we get to answer this question now.
00:43:02
Speaker
That's a peep behind the curtain. That's the public speaker. Yeah, right, right. Have you had coaching by any public speaking coaches? Or has this all been developed on your own? It's all us, yeah. People will give us advice when they do see us speak. Yeah. Which we occasionally take. Do you take any of it? Yeah, right. I'm a little defensive about it, to be honest. Sometimes people are scared to give a critique. They don't want to. Yeah.
00:43:31
Speaker
but I always appreciate when someone will tell us what they think could make it better. Yeah. Yeah, but otherwise, we just have honed it. Yeah. Just repetition. Right. Right. Wow, fabulous.
00:43:44
Speaker
So parting words, particularly for people who are listening to the podcast.
Call to Action for Safety Professionals
00:43:51
Speaker
We're followed by safety professionals from all over the United States. Do you have a call to action for safety professionals? These are people who are working with employees. And of course, people who are listening are to be thinking about their kids like you're getting so much. But it's more than just about teenagers.
00:44:11
Speaker
So what calls to action do you have for safety professionals? What can we do as a profession to lay our hands on this? I think to me it's what we all already know. There's nothing on a phone more important than a human life. And we all know that. We gotta live that. We gotta lead by example. We gotta hold each other accountable to our actions and speak up when
00:44:36
Speaker
something is wrong and we know it's wrong. I think it's just about making it personal. States can have laws, countries can have laws, companies can have policies, but if people don't really feel the reason why that's in place, they don't want to follow it. We hear from a lot of fleet managers that
00:44:58
Speaker
We have this policy, but our guys are kind of, you know, we're butting heads about it. But if you can get that room full of people to care, to hear a story like Jay Z's, maybe shed its ear, whatever it is. To think about their daughters. Yeah, get these people to feel as if this could have happened to them and their families then.
00:45:17
Speaker
then you can make an impact. Then you can actually change the way people drive. So that's just what we focus on. The power of story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you both so much for doing this. Thank you for the work that you're doing and your life's work together. It's fabulous. Appreciate it. Oh, and forgot to say, so if people want to follow you, learn more about these statistics, invite you to speak, where shall they find you?
00:45:46
Speaker
Hangupanddrive.com is our website. I'm the only JC Good out there on social media. I'm pretty sure that's still true, so find me on social media and connect with me. She is easy to find. Steve Johnson? Hard to find. A lot of Steve Johnsons in the list. There's another one somewhere at this conference. Yeah, that's right. I registered for the conference when you had to get your badge earlier and there was a second Steve Johnson.
00:46:08
Speaker
That was horrifying. Another reason why it was necessary that you partnered with this woman for the name in addition to everything else. I needed something unique. J.C. Good, Steve Johnson, thank you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you all for spending your time listening today and more importantly, thank you for the work and contributions that you do making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day.
00:46:37
Speaker
If you'd like to join the conversation about this episode or any of our previous episodes, follow our page and join the Accidental Safety Pro community group on Facebook. If you aren't subscribed to the podcast and want to hear past or future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any podcast player that you'd like.
00:46:55
Speaker
You can also find all of our episodes at vividlearningsystems.com slash podcast. And we'd love it if you could leave us a rating and review us on iTunes. It helps share the story with more and more safety professionals. And you can share any episode with your friends. If you have a suggestion for a guest, including if it's you, you can please go ahead and contact me at social at vividlearningsystems.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.