Tuesday morning at 10, members of our support group, the St. Louis Homeschool Network, are planting a tree in Tower Grove Park near the Chinese shelter. The tree will honor one of our "graduates," Julia Orth, who was killed in a car "accident" in July.

The quotation marks around "graduates" and "accident" are purposeful. Just as the home-schooling movement is not a degree-granting institution, I contend that there rarely are such things as car accidents. What we have, instead, are car crashes. They are not intentional, of course, but most are caused by human error of one sort or another. And given the terrible toll of fatal crashes, we need to find new, more effective ways to prevent them.