The intersection of Halls Ferry Road and North Frontage is one of the most traveled in Vicksburg. The traffic light works on a small delay — when the Halls Ferry side turns red, it is a second or two before the North Frontage side turns to green.

On Monday morning, police and witnesses said, 62-year-old Julius Hebron blew through a red light after two other cars, crossing Halls Ferry, had resumed travel on North Frontage. Hebron’s truck smashed broadside into one driven by 34-year-old Shelly Guider. Her car then struck a Honda. Guider was killed in the wreck. Hebron now faces aggravated DUI charges.

Whether alcohol played a part in the wreck will be decided by the justice system, but something impaired Hebron’s judgment enough to plow through a recognizable stop signal at a busy intersection. Green means go, yellow means slow and red means stop.

How many times must we be reminded to pay attention? A vehicle is the most readily available deadly weapon. When a child in Mississippi celebrates his or her 16th birthday, the teen becomes eligible to get behind the wheel of a dangerous weapon. We hope training and common sense will assist any driver. What we cannot tolerate is absolute negligence on the road. Negligence, in this case, led to the death of a young nurse.

It’s not just on the road, either. How many accounts are published annually about hunting accidents? Hunters fall from stands when not properly harnessed. Some shoot themselves because they tried to carry a loaded weapon into the stand. All so avoidable, yet they continue to happen.

It has long been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We have implored, almost begged the people of this county to stop, slow down, pay attention. When weapons are involved — a hunting rifle or an old pickup — the consequences to not paying due diligence, for whatever reason, can be catastrophic.

Families were inexorably changed on Monday because, witnesses said, a man in a weapon ignored the most basic of traffic rules and plowed through an intersection, into a jail cell.

Sad.

Tragic.

Pitiful.

Avoidable.