Once again we here at Respondersafety.com have the sad duty to report a series of highway safety incidents to you.

Just when it feels like we are making progress towards our goal of safety on the roadways, we seem to take several giant steps back. At least that is the way I see it.

Let us take a look at several fatal incidents that have occurred in the past few days. The first tragedy comes from Missouri where an officer was killed Sunday in Warren County. According to a story on the KOLR10 website in Springfield this occurred, " …when a car being chased by police left Interstate 70 and overturned up to nine times. The officer, standing along the freeway, was hit and suffered fatal injuries. He was 35-year-old Vernon Seals of Washington, Missouri, a part-time officer in the Warren County community of Truesdale."

Sad to say, the car was occupied by suspects in a nearby crime. The web article goes on to state that. " …The car carried two men sought after a Fulton man was shot and wounded at his home." Ours is a dangerous world. That is why we must always be on guard when we are out on the roads. We cannot expect criminals to place any value on the lives of our emergency service workers when they care so little about themselves.

Sunday was also a tragic day in Oklahoma. A story carried by Firehouse.com described the deaths of two paramedics and an accident victim in a highway massacre. The accident happened at about 4:30 p.m. local time Sunday along Interstate 35 in Ardmore.

According to the Firehouse.com article, Paramedic Shawn Skelly, 27, Critical Care Paramedic Shane Gilmore, 32, and an Oklahoma Highway trooper were responding to a driver who had run off the road and down a ravine during a severe rainstorm. The three responders walked the victim back up the hill. Just as the trooper turned away to go to his vehicle, the paramedics arrived at the back of their unit with the patient, and a sports utility vehicle slammed into them, said Oklahoma Highway Patrol Troop Commander Lt. Charles Strasbaugh."

Authorities indicated that the paramedics and the patient all sustained broken necks and broken legs. The medical examiner's office released a finding that that "all three died instantly. They probably didn't even see it coming," he said. The trooper was not injured."

Authorities also stated that the driver of the sport utility vehicle failed to slow down as it neared the ambulance. Instead, it went to the left to try to pass all of the other drivers who were slowing down. The vehicle then hydroplaned and slid into the accident scene.

Perhaps it is time for all of us to work just a little bit harder to educate the public. We are not killing ourselves here gang. People are slaughtering us due to their selfish acts. Who among us is so important that they have the right to zoom around lines of stopped traffic? However you see it all the time. In other cases it is someone in a hurry who zips along the shoulder of the road while the rest of us are stopped dead. This types of actions need to be punished.

Up in Chelmsford, Massachusetts we saw the results of a drunk driver's actions. An article on the Lowell-Sun website speaks to the fact that, " … a Billerica woman was drunk when her car slammed into the back of a Chelmsford police cruiser on U.S. Route 3 just before midnight on Friday, according to police."

The story goes on to state that, " … Auxiliary Police Officer Ralph Roscoe, 44, of Chelmsford, was working a traffic detail for Modern Continental Construction just before midnight when his cruiser was struck by a vehicle driven by Kimba L. Keesler, 34, of 28 Allen Road, Billerica, police said."

Once again we see the combination on night and booze at work. Fortunately in this case, the officer involves was not seriously injured. That article on the website goes on to state that, " … Roscoe was OK, but as a precaution was taken by ambulance to Lowell General Hospital, where he was treated and released."

Lest you think that this scourge is limited to our country, I recently received word of an incident up near Montreal, Canada. A story on the Canada.com website tells us that, " … The Sûreté du Québec are looking for witnesses in the death of one of their own on the southbound Laurentian Autoroute early Sunday."

Provincial police believe it is possible there was an accident involving multiple vehicles moments after Cpl. Antonio Arseneault and Transport Quebec patroller Jean-Yves Therrien were struck and killed on Highway 15 south in Laval, near the Curé Labelle exit.

The story tells us that, " … According to some witnesses there was an accident, but we don't know how many people were involved, said Constable Isabelle Gendron, a Sûreté du Québec spokesman. We'd like to meet these people because they might be able to give us valuable information."

We here at Respondersafety.com want to express our sympathies to each family that was touched by these tragedies. We also wish to express our resolve to continue the battle for safety. Our actions are slowly taking hold in a number of places. We will keep moving forward.