COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — Allen Heinze saw the crash scene where his wife died in November. She was driving to visit him at a job site in Lorson Ranch. Heinze grew worried when she didn't show up.
So, he left to look for her thinking the car must have broken down.
"I came up over the hill, and I saw the red and blue lights, and my stomach kind sank," Heinze recalled.
The state troopers working the accident investigation would not let him stay at the scene. So, he asked which hospital they took the driver to and left to look for Tara. She wasn't there.
Later at home, after calling every hospital in the city, his mom answered a call from the state patrol.
"My mom walked in the room and I just knew," Heinze recalled. "Mom started crying, and it was really difficult."
The crash report indicated Tara was heading south on Powers Boulevard when she made a left onto Fontaine Boulevard. The driver who hit her was heading north. Troopers estimate the vehicle's speed at the time of collision was 106 miles per hour.
The force of the wreck pushed Tara's car north by 229 feet. The engine block and front axle separated from the vehicle.
The Colorado State Patrol said high speeds increase the lethality of car wrecks.
"If on a 65 mile per hour road, you're going 80-90 miles an hour, that multiplies the damage that can be done to yourself, to passengers in your vehicle, and even people in other vehicles if you have a vehicle to vehicle collision," said Trooper Gabriel Moltrer, a public information officer with the CPS.
New data show speeding was the largest contributing factor in wrecks where people were hurt or killed in 2023. Troopers wrote more than 46,500 speeding tickets statewide in 2023.
Some 3,667 of those were from El Paso County, the highest in the state.
The five highways where drivers speed most often include I-70, I-25, U.S. Hwy 50, U.S. Hwy 24, U.S. Hwy 285.
"I know a lot of people will think it's not going to impact me very greatly if I get one or two speeding tickets," Trooper Moltrer said. "But the cost of them, the amount of points that can go against your driving license, before you know it, those add up."
The state patrol is launching a year-long "Drive Safe" campaign. They will air commercials that encourage people to drive like a trooper is riding with you.
Heinze hopes sharing his story will encourage other drivers to change their behavior behind the wheel.
"There's consequences for whatever you do in life and making really poor decisions driving a huge chunk of steel that weighs a couple of tons at least, there's some responsibility there," he said.
The driver who hit Tara, Maxximus Towery, was arrested in December on a charge of vehicular homicide. Court records show a hearing is scheduled in the case on February 1.
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