Drunk Driving

Last Thursday I was hit by a drunk driver. I was sitting at a red light on Highway 231, a major four-lane near my home. The intoxicated driver failed to slow down and crashed into the back of my truck at highway speed. The impact pushed my truck over two hundred feet. The impact was so fast that my stainless steel coffee mug flew from the cup holder into the back window. Maybe it's better to say the cup really didn't move that much, the truck just moved under the cup!

Thankfully, no other vehicle was traveling through the intersection. My first visual memory of the crash is seeing myself sliding through the intersection. I have no memory of the first thirty or forty feet of movement. My truck stopped in the grass median before crossing into the opposite lanes of traffic.

The driver of the other vehicle was visibly intoxicated. He couldn't walk without stumbling. His speech was slurred. He couldn't say his ABC's to the responding officer. He blew a .19 on his breath test, twice the legal limit in Alabama. He kept telling me he was on his way to Dothan to eat steak. Instead he was taken to the Dale County Jail.

The irony: I had just finished teaching a class about substance abuse with a group of teenagers.

I don't want to die from another person's stupidity. It's easy enough to die on the road without alcohol. The guy who hit me kept apologizing. I kept thinking his apology does nothing to change what happened. And if someone had been killed his apology would have been as worthless as his breath.

MADD