A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention

by Matt Richtel

  Now he wears a white-and-orange-striped shirt and pants. He looks stocky, the years since the accident having turned him from adolescence into a man. A voice-over accompanies the images. It belongs to Terryl: “To Reggie, who has never been away from home unless it was for something positive, every day will seem like an eternity. He will be with the general population so he will be with people who have long criminal histories.”

  As Reggie hands over his old clothes, Linton’s voice comes in: “He will be in with some very unsavory people.”

  THE FIRST NIGHT, THERE was no room for Reggie to have a bed. So he received a mattress put on the floor next to a bunk. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t sleep for days. He tried to keep his eyes down. He shared a cell at some point with someone who had nearly beaten his girlfriend to death. How scared should Reggie be? How self-pitying? He’d actually killed someone.

  THE CASE STUCK WITH Judge Willmore. He’d stopped using his phone while driving. Midway through Reggie’s sentence, he decided it was enough. In a highly unusual move—again, reflecting a highly unusual case—he called Linton and Bunderson and asked if he might shorten the sentence; in effect, commute it, with the understanding that Reggie would serve all of it, and more, if he didn’t meet his obligations.

  Reggie served eighteen days of his thirty-day sentence.

  CHAPTER 44

  REGGIE

  IN LATE SEPTEMBER 2009, almost three years to the day of the accident, Reggie boarded an airplane for Washington, D.C. He was going to attend the first ever Distracted Driving Summit, which was organized by Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood.

  Secretary LaHood, tall and genial, a former Illinois congressman, had begun focusing himself, and his agency, on the issue of preventable traffic fatalities, especially those caused by use of technology by drivers. “This,” he said, “is probably the most important meeting in the history of the Department of Transportation.”

  Held at a downtown hotel, the conference drew scientists, public safety advocates, and legislators, and it brought together people involved in distracted-driving accidents, both victims’ families and, in one case, the driver in a deadly wreck. That was Reggie. The event included all the big ideas and some of the same players as Reggie’s trial, but played out on a much bigger stage.

  Reggie told his story to the attendees. “Two men, who were fathers, and also husbands, cared for their family, wanted the best for them. And because of my choice to text and drive, I took their lives. I changed the lives of these families. I changed my life forever,” he said.

  It made a strong impression on Secretary LaHood.

  “His story was so compelling, the way he tells it, the way he gets their attention,” the secretary reflects. He was unlike most of the other people who testified about such dangers; they tended to be researchers, victims, or their families. “It’s different when you hear it from someone who has committed the terrible act of killing someone.”

  I WAS AMONG THOSE people at the conference, though by that time I was no stranger to Reggie’s story, and his passion. As part of a series about distracted driving, I’d written a front-page story about Reggie that appeared just a few weeks before the summit in Washington. Even in getting to know Reggie and Terryl in the past month or so, I could tell they were deep wells—open, accessible, injured people.

  It was also clear that the topic of distracted driving went well beyond the accessibility of technology in cars. It was a story about science, primitive instinct, and culture and sociology, and the tension between the need to stay connected and the risks of being entranced by their siren call.

  During the conference, the New York Times published another long story in our “Driven to Distraction” series about people who feel compelled to get work done while they’re driving—“mobile workers.” Under the headline “At 60 M.P.H., Office Work Is High Risk,” the story quoted businesspeople describing the desperate need to respond to client inquiries within seconds, or risk losing a sale.

  The story contrasted those demands with the science showing that when someone was being responsive, it wasn’t the same thing as being effective. In fact, not only did the research show that it is physically impossible to do more than one thing at a time, but the mere effort to juggle forces a person to switch tasks in a way that robs performance from each task. Another study, done in 2006 at the University of California at Los Angeles, compared brains of people trying to multitask to those doing a single job and found something fascinating: People who focused on doing only one thing performed learning and memory tasks with the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center, whereas people trying to do two tasks relied more heavily to learn and memorize on the parts of the brain associated with motor skills. That, the researchers said, was not a good way to enforce long-term learning and memory.

  When someone is doing two things at once, “there is an illusion of productivity,” David E. Meyer, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan told me for the story. His research had showed that performance drops sharply when someone multitasks. “It’s actually counterproductive.

  “To the extent that someone is focused on driving, the quality of work product is diminished,” he added. “To the extent someone is focused on work and not driving, there’s a risk of crashing and burning. Something’s got to give.”

  Sometimes, the results were tragic.

  The story described the Coca-Cola truck driver who, distracted by the computer he used to get his delivery orders, killed a seven-year-old in the backseat of an oncoming truck. In the instant after the wreck, the boy’s mother went chasing after the truck driver. We quoted her as recalling:

  “I said, ‘Why, why, why?’ ” she recalled screaming at him. “He told me, ‘I just took my eyes off the road for a second because I was looking at my computer.’ ”

  She started chasing him.

  “I went into a mad rage,” she said. “If he’d said he’d fallen asleep, maybe I’d have understood. But using a computer?”

  A few days later, we wrote a piece about truckers in general who insisted they needed to text while driving to stay in touch with dispatch. The story described the concerns by the trucking industry that if texting were made illegal, it could hinder their efficiency of communications.

  AT THE END OF the distracted driving conference, Secretary LaHood announced that President Obama had signed an order forbidding federal employees from texting while driving during work hours. The secretary declared that other measures were being considered as well. He added that the order to restrict text messaging by federal employees behind the wheel “sends a very clear signal to the American public that distracted driving is dangerous and unacceptable.”

  IT COULD HAVE BEEN the end of it for Reggie. He’d helped pass a law, spoken at numerous events, put himself out in front of three hundred people in Washington, D.C., at the conference organized by Secretary LaHood.

  At the end of September, Bunderson wrote a letter to Reggie and his parents. It began:

  Dear Reggie, Ed and Mary Jane:

  Just for your files, enclosed you will find a copy of the Order of Dismissal.

  The letter went on to discuss a few finalities involving insurance and Mr. Kaiserman and to explain that Reggie’s file could be expunged and the court records sealed. It would cost between $500 to $850.

  He enclosed his latest billing statement.

  He concluded:

  Reggie, I wish you good luck in all your future endeavors, and feel free to call me if you have any questions.

  It was really, and finally over.

  But it wasn’t. Not even close.

  THAT SAME MONTH, REGGIE had been writing his essay about Les Misérables, explaining the significance to him of the epic story. He submitted it to Judge Willmore in September.

  The three-page, single-spaced report reflects a great deal of analysis and reflection. The use of language is anything but inarticulate, as Bunderson once feared Reggie might be perceived if he testified. It is fl
owing and sophisticated, beginning with a brief passage summarizing the plot. Jean Valjean, the book’s hero, is shown mercy by a bishop for a criminal act. The bishop, Reggie wrote “taught him a lesson without directly saying anything to him.

  “Valjean did not promise anything to the bishop at this time and the bishop didn’t expect him to. Valjean did not promise to him to spend his life in service, but it was after he left that he looked inside of himself and decided that he wanted to help others and this life would be better served in helping others.

  “I think this is the message that I’m supposed to receive.”

  He returned to summarizing the book, emphasizing examples of where Valjean served others. Then Reggie applied the story to his own life. “I now understand that for me to live in any matter other than serving others would be selfish and unjust. I don’t need to go around making a promise that I’m going to devote the rest of my life to service,” he wrote. “But through this terrible situation that I have created, I have received a gift that I have the ability to affect a lot of people’s lives. I can make a promise to myself that I will do whatever it takes to try and help people by making sure that nobody makes the same mistake that I did.

  “Valjean has taught me that any person in any situation has the choice to change. Change is a choice. It’s that simple. Much like he changed in the story, I have changed and will change as I commit myself to service toward society.”

  He finished by describing the lesson he would “take most from the book.” Namely: not seeking profit or praise from his redemptive efforts. “When I go out and hopefully have an impact on society, I will always remember that I don’t need praise, in fact, not only do I not need it, but I don’t want it.”

  IN JANUARY 2010, REGGIE appeared on an Oprah segment about driver distraction, telling his story.

  The night before the taping of the show, in Chicago, Reggie had dinner with Terryl and Megan O’Dell. Reggie and Megan made a decent connection, what Reggie hoped would be the beginning of a friendship. The two started talking on a regular basis.

  The requests poured in for Reggie to talk publicly, and even though his sentence was complete, he said yes, over and over. And each time, he displayed the same level of grief, what people who heard him would characterize as inescapable sincerity.

  That June, he appeared in front of the most elite basketball players in the world, an audience of one hundred rookies entering the National Basketball Association. The NBA had heard about Reggie and wanted him to reach out to its players because the league felt that so much pressure was mounting for them to be connected all the time. They were young, with phones and fast cars, and, adding to all of it, the emergence of social media. “Our players are very active on the social media front, they like to keep their fans abreast of their progress, something as simple as the fact they’re going from the breakfast table to the workout room, and sometimes larger issues,” says Rory Sparrow, a former NBA player who had become vice president of player development.

  A roomful of NBA stars, young and on top of the world, might have intimidated anyone, let alone Reggie, a good basketball player himself, who aspired to coach and lead players. But far from daunted, he charged right in. He gave a version of his usual presentation. He asked them: Would you pause to text while driving to the basket? And then he cried as he described his guilt, and pleaded with them not to “become like me.”

  The roomful of players was silent, rapt; then, when Reggie was finished, they stood in applause.

  Sparrow says: “As his story comes out, you realize that, every time, he is reliving it.”

  CHAPTER 45

  REDEMPTION

  MY NAME IS REGGIE Shaw.”

  The cavernous auditorium seems like it could swallow Reggie, who stands alone on stage. He holds a microphone in his right hand. He wears a tie.

  “I’m going to tell you a story.”

  Around five hundred students from Box Elder High School watch and, to a greater or lesser extent, listen. Sprinkled throughout, students play games on their phones. It’s a midmorning assembly focusing on safe driving.

  “Keep in mind that, me and you, we’re not different,” Reggie says. “I’ve been to Brigham City millions of times. I’ve played basketball in your gym. I’ve played football on your field.

  “When I was young, growing up, I always thought I was invincible. Growing up in . . . Tremonton, nothing bad happened to me, or people in my life.” Reggie shifts from foot to foot. “I turned nineteen, got a job in Logan, painting houses over there. I got up early and headed over the mountains there.

  “One morning, I got up, headed to work, and I made a choice, made a decision that day, something I did all the time. I decided I was going to text and drive. On my way to work, I was reading and sending text messages. I go across the center line, and I hit another car.”

  For the first time, Reggie pauses. He licks his lips, swallows. He sports a goatee, no longer the person with the bowl haircut and boyish face that shone on his driver’s license. It’s a Thursday in early April 2013.

  “On the way to work were two men with families they loved and cared for, they provided for. They were both killed on impact. . . . I live every single day of my life knowing I took two men’s lives in an accident that was one hundred percent preventable.”

  Reggie’s parents sit in the front row. Ed wears a red short-sleeve shirt, work boots and jeans, eyeglasses; his hair is starting to gray. Mary Jane sniffles, her legs crossed; together, Reggie’s parents seem barely to be holding it together, folding in on themselves. Reggie’s still relatively in control, reciting facts and emotion. But Ed and Mary Jane know what’s coming. Reggie’s going to crash, and he’s going to take these half-attentive students with him.

  “On my sentencing day, the last day of court, the families got a chance to speak to me, to address me. One of the men has a young daughter, about my age, and she gets up and talks about how she’d just gotten married and she talks about her wedding and she talks about how her father was not there to walk her down the aisle.” Reggie sniffles. “She turns to me, and she looks me right in the eye, and she says: ‘Because you took that away from me.’ She was absolutely right. I wanted to text and drive, and I took that opportunity away from her, to have that with her father. I was thinking, at the time of the accident, I was only thinking about that message. I want you to think about every single message you’ve ever sent or received. Is there any one message you’d take your life or someone else’s life for? Absolutely not. It’s been almost eight years since that accident happened. It is difficult for me every single day. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about that accident and say to myself: ‘I wish I could go back and change what happened.’ I go to bed every night, and look at myself in the mirror every morning, knowing I caused an accident that was one hundred percent preventable. I took two great men’s lives.”

  Reggie’s words aren’t ornate or filled with rhetorical flourish. Their power, building and building, comes from grief. It is changing the physical surroundings, now threatening to swallow the auditorium. Reggie’s choking it back, straining to hold it. Students lean forward, a few blink tears.

  “I only spent thirty days in jail. People ask: ‘Do you feel like that’s enough time—for what you did?’ I don’t know. Still to this day, I think about that question. I don’t know.” Reggie stands up a bit straighter, takes a deep breath. This part he can handle. He tells them about the first three nights and four full days in twenty-four-hour lockdown. He tells them how he slept on a “boat,” which is a small blue bed, an inch and a half thick, because the jail was overcrowded and the bunks were taken by his cellmates. “They throw it on the floor and hand me a thin blanket, shove me in, and shut the door and say good luck.”

  For the first four days, he explains, he sat on the cement floor twenty-three hours a day. Then he got his bunk. His cellmate was being held awaiting transfer to the state penitentiary for nearly beating his girlfriend to death. Reggie’s hold
ing the microphone with both hands.

  “The thing about jail is nobody cares about you. Nobody liked me there. They called me the ‘Textual Offender.’ I go back to that question,” he says, referring to whether he spent enough time in jail for his crime. “I don’t know. One thing I can tell you: If I could go back and spend the rest of my life in jail to save those two men’s lives, I would do it, in a heartbeat. I would live there every single day of my life rather than take two men’s lives.”

  Now he’s crying.

  “I’m here for one reason. That’s for you guys to look at me—” Reggie’s choking back tears. He can’t talk. He fights to finish the sentence. “And say: ‘I don’t want to be that guy.’ ”

  There’s just Reggie now, and his grief, five hundred students absorbed in it. He continues about how he doesn’t want them to be him.

  “ ‘I don’t want to put people through what he’s put people through. I don’t want to go through what he went through.’ I can promise. I can promise you . . .” He starts to regain himself. “When you get behind the wheel of a car, that is not the time to make phone calls, to send text messages. Your friends can wait, your family can wait.

  “Driving in the car, you thought a text was more important than their son or daughter. It is not worth it. It is not worth it. Please make a pledge with me today. Help me out. Please put your cell phones away when driving. Turn them off and put them away. You’re going to save somebody’s life.”

  Reggie takes a deep breath, a wind-down breath. Then, he just sums up, “I’d love to answer your questions. I’m very open about my story. Nothing crosses the line with me.”

  Applause rings out, and then it’s done. Students file out, but a handful come to the front to thank Reggie.

  “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen,” says Nate Christensen, seventeen, a senior, wearing black shorts and a red T-shirt and a diamond stud in his ear. “I’ve done it,” he says of texting. “I really didn’t think it was a big issue. I looked up every few seconds and figured I’d be all right. That’s obviously not the case.”