The Wisconsin State Journal published this today with the title "A Proactive Sunday Drive." I had made some changes since I first dashed it off and sent it to them for the editorial page. It would have been nice if they had told me they were publishing it and I could have updated it. In addition, it lists me as being a member of SCAODA, which is Wisconsin's State Council on Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse, which I am not, officially. I'm only a parent rep on SCAODA's Subcommittee on Child and Youth Adolescent Treatment--or some such title.
Here's my version of How to Stop a Drunk Driver
My daughter-in-law, Katie, caught a drunk driver on our way back from taking my granddaughter to camp on a summer Sunday. It wasn’t easy, but it was a simple approach that you can take, too, if you care about saving lives. It requires the ability to manage a phone while driving (although a passenger could also take over that task). She dialed 911. Over and over. And something else that many people—at least in Wisconsin--don’t seem to have: the conviction that endangering others by drinking and driving is wrong.
Wisconsin has been rated the worst state for traffic fatalities involving a drunk driver by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD). A survey by the Appleton Post-Crescent newspaper that ranked all 50 states on ten key areas related to alcohol consumption and impact of drinking found Wisconsin has the most pervasive drinking culture in the country. Other studies show that Wisconsin leads the nation in binge drinking, alcohol use among adults, driving after drinking among high school students, female drinkers of child-bearing age, and possibly the number of infants born with fetal alcohol syndrome.
Driving home to the Madison area after dropping off my oldest grandchild at camp near Prairie du Chien on that Sunday afternoon, when Katie noticed a car weaving around on the highway ahead, she called 911 and notified authorities of our location. With 3 young grandchildren in the van, I cautioned Katie not to follow the potentially impaired driver too closely, but she was determined not to let him out of her sight until authorities showed up. Whether he was drunk or not, he was driving dangerously.
When we didn't see a trooper after the first call, she called again. This time while she was on the phone, the driver veered out of his lane in a small town along the highway, did a U-turn in the middle of the road up onto someone's yard on a corner, bumped down the curb and sped off down a side street. A woman pushing a stroller with a baby in it on the other side of the street narrowly missed being a victim of this driver. Another 60 seconds and the driver would have plowed through people instead of grass. We slowed down and told her we were on the phone with authorities.
Katie gave the dispatcher the intersection and then followed the car, which had simply gone around the block and gotten back on the highway. Once on the highway, two cars back now, we could see he was still weaving dangerously. She called the dispatcher a third time just as the driver went into the other lane of oncoming traffic but still no trooper. After that, the driver suddenly turned off the highway on a small road that went toward a farmhouse and curved through cornfields. At that point, Katie called back and was able to identify the make of the car. We waited off the road until she saw the state trooper approaching and coached the dispatcher on directions.
While this was happening, I was tending to a crying baby in a car seat and quieting a worried 4-year-old who kept saying "Let's go home now." The 2-year-old slept through it all. I don’t advocate this for anyone who is not a 100 percent skilled driver with someone in the car to reassure child passengers. With me as backup, Katie was determined to prevent a potential accident that could easily happen to an unsuspecting mother in a van filled with children traveling in the opposite direction. I am convinced that is exactly what she did.
After she got home, the state trooper called to tell her that he had, in fact, arrested the driver. When he caught him he was driving in the wrong lane and had visible damaged to his car. The officer had a video of the driver’s failed sobriety test and his blood alcohol level was 2.8. Although it remains to be seen how fast the driver is back in his car and what kind of consequence he will receive from the state of Wisconsin, perhaps the most lenient in the country when it comes to drunken driving penalties, it was the outcome Katie was hoping for. There is no question in my mind that Katie saved lives that Sunday.
In September I'll be flying to Dallas to receive a 2008 MADD Media Award for my blog entries on drunk driving at www.motherwarriors.blogspot.com. I can bring a guest to the awards luncheon at the annual MADD conference. I hope Katie can come. I don't know of anyone who has more clearly demonstrated what it takes to get a drunk driver off the road before an accident happens and I dedicate my MADD award to her and others like her who not only care about protecting their families from drunk drivers, but who take responsibility for protecting everyone’s families—including the family of the drunk driver.
Katie not only called 911 to report a reckless driver, she stuck with it until a trooper showed up. Who knows how far the impaired man had already driven without anyone taking the initiative to get him off the road--or what might have happened had Katie not called 911? As long as observers think this is par for the course for a Sunday drive in Wisconsin, we’re going to retain our rankings as the worst state for consequences of drinking too much.
If you want to save a life, call 911 when you see reckless driving. Take a drunk driver off the road. It makes a difference, at least for a day, for hundreds or thousands of people driving on, biking on, or walking near a road. Heck, it can even save those who live in houses along any street. Our Sunday driver nearly hit a house. Think it couldn’t happen to you or your loved ones? Dawn Dartez plowed into a senior housing complex in Oregon, Wisconsin, in October 2005, killing a 77-year-old woman who was asleep in her bed, then drove home without reporting the accident (she was sentenced in February 2008 to 6 months in jail).
What if someone had called 911 when they saw Dartez leaving a bar drunk, weaving on the road, or even before she got in the car? It boggles the mind to know how simple and effective it would be if people were so strongly convinced that drinking and driving is wrong that they would call 911 on a relative, friend, or stranger who is driving drunk. The lives you save could be those of my granddaughters or your granddaughters.
By the way, this is the third time Katie has caught a drunk driver by persistently calling 911 until she saw that the situation was going to be pursued by authorities.
