Sunday, August 24, 2008

Not Just An "Accident" (DUI Loss Entry No. 3)

I don’t remember what word the chaplain used in the Emergency Room. But it seems to me he first told me my father was crossing the street and was hit by a car. He explained how severe my dad’s injuries were, and that my dad was in emergency surgery to stop internal bleeding in his pelvis. I asked about my mom, because I hadn’t been able to reach her after I got the call that my dad was at Loyola Hospital. I was told she’d been hit, too, and died at the scene.

As I sat in the tiny room off the ER, waiting to find out if my dad would get through the surgery, along with everything else, I felt bad for the driver. I imagined how awful I would feel if I were driving and killed someone.

I’m not sure who told me the driver had been drinking. It might have been the Brookfield police chief, who came to the ER that night. Later I also learned the man had driven away from the scene, running a stop sign while doing so. And that this wasn’t the first DUI.

These are the types of things that make "accident" a hard word to hear or use for many people who've been injured by or lost loved ones to drunk drivers. The driver who hit my parents had a DUI years before that resulted in supervision. Then, two days before the crash, he was driving drunk and hit a utility pole. He damaged his own car, but didn’t seriously hurt himself or hit anyone else. When he hit my parents, he was driving his brother’s Geo Tracker. My mother was pulled under the vehicle and was dragged, my father flew into the air, hit the hood or roof, and landed at the side of the road. The crash caused multiple pelvic factures, tore his urethra, tore his diaphragm so that his other organs started poking through into his lung area, and head trauma. He suffered a mild heart attack due to the collision. One doctor called it a miracle that the heart attack didn’t damage his heart. He was eighty-eight and in amazing shape before he was hit.

At sentencing, the driver’s attorney argued it was an “accident.” He didn’t say “just an accident,” but he might as well have.
As Twyla, one of the victim advocates at Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists, says, an accident is when you slip and fall on the ice. Drinking and getting into a car is a choice. This man knew what could happen, what was likely to happen. His drinking led to a collision two days before. And it's hard to be a living, breathing human being in the U.S. and not know consuming alcohol affects driving ability.

The driver was sentenced twelve years for the “accident.”

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