“There was glass in my face…. My friend had glass in his mouth and everyone was bleeding. That was really the moment I knew I messed up.”
As senior James Cook stumbled out of his wrecked car and checked on his passengers, he knew there was trouble looming.
“We were partying, and we had too much to drink, and we tried to make it back to the house that we were staying at that night,” said Cook, which is not his real name. “I looked off the road to fix my radio, and I looked back up, and we were at the end of the road. I stomped on my brakes, but by then it was too late, so we went through the stop sign and into a ditch. After we made sure everyone was okay, [the police] were already there and they did a sobriety test and made me blow into the breathalyzer, and then they [arrested] me.”
Cook was later convicted of driving under the influence (DUI). The breathalyzer indicated his blood alcohol level was .2, over two times the limit for a legal adult. His charge was increased by North Carolina’s “zero-tolerance” policy for underage drunk drivers.
This was not the first time Cook had driven drunk, but it was his last.
“Any time I get in the car, I make sure that the person I’m driving with is sober, even if it’s myself,” Cook said.
Not every student who drives while intoxicated gets caught, however. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released a report in 2011 indicating that the average drunk driver will drive drunk about 80 times before their first arrest.
Many drunk driving incidents do not end simply in arrest. Many involve a crash of some sort, as in the case of the over 10,000 drunk driving fatalities that occurred in 2013, according to the National Traffic Safety Administration.
The National Traffic Safety Administration also released a report revealing that the leading cause of death for teenagers is car crashes, and about 25 percent of those crashes involve an underage drunk driver.
Despite these statistics, students at Northwood still choose to drive under the influence.
“I won’t get caught [driving drunk] because I take good routes and know my way around this county,” an anonymous senior said.
As serious as an issue like drunk driving is, many students who drink and drive regularly often downplay the danger by making jokes. When talking about his experiences drunk driving, one anonymous senior joked that he was “invincible.”
“It honestly kind of makes me angry [to hear people joke about drunk driving] because it reminds me of how I used to be,” Cook said.
School Resource Officer Herbie Stubbs also views the issue more gravely.
“Students think they’re invincible,” Stubbs said. “[They think], ‘Hey, I’m good; I can drive; I can get home,’ and then before you know it, they realize that they made a huge mistake and they caused an accident and hurt themselves or someone else.”
Some students get in cars with drunk drivers even though they know they shouldn’t. A survey of 100 Northwood juniors and seniors revealed that while 100 percent of students do not approve of driving drunk, 25 percent of them have been driven by someone who was intoxicated.
One anonymous senior recounted her experiences getting in a car with her drunken friend.
“I was scared but trying to stay optimistic,” the senior said. “I wanted to think that everything was going to be okay. He was driving really slow, really cautiously, but he did forget to turn the headlights on for a solid 30 seconds.”
An anonymous junior had a similar experience.
“It feels like you have no other choice,” the junior said.
Senior Kirsten Sellers offers another perspective on the choice of whether or not to get in the car with a drunk driver.
“There are so many other options,” Sellers said. “You can find someone who’s sober, you can call your parents, you [can] call a designated driving service or even get a taxi. Deciding to drive drunk or deciding to get in the car with a drunk driver could be the last decision you ever make.”
Cook offers this advice to students who might drive drunk in the future: “Don’t do it; it’s not safe. No matter how good you think you are, you will eventually get caught, no matter what.”
– By Sawyer Davis
Driving Under the Influence: A victim tells her story
On a night in 1989, Patricia Whitt was on her way home from a Charlotte Hornets’ game. Upon entering her vehicle, Whitt made the decision to drive instead of her boyfriend, Robert Davis, because he had consumed “a couple beers” at the game.
According to Whitt, on their way home they encountered a car that was swerving and heading toward them. Whitt slowed down as she was approaching a left hand turn and the swerving car veered left, hitting a sign post. The signpost flew through the air “like a projectile,” crashing through Whitt’s windshield and into her head.
Whitt survived the crash but has lasting memory issues. The driver of the other car had no life threatening injuries and was under the influence at the time of the accident.
“It just sunk in that somebody decided to drink and then made the decision to get in the car and drive and hurt someone else forever,” Whitt said.
Whitt was knocked unconscious, her boyfriend saw what happened, applied the car’s brakes and exited the vehicle to pursue the other driver who had taken off.
Thinking that Whitt was dead, Davis removed the signpost from her head, moved Whitt over and got into the driver’s seat of the car to track down the other driver. As he headed down the highway, holding Whitt in his arms, he felt Whitt gasp and realized she was still alive. Davis then turned around and headed toward the hospital.
A highway trooper spotted Whitt and Davis’ speeding vehicle and fell in pursuit. Davis, knowing his girlfriend’s life was at stake, refused to stop the car despite the trailing highway troopers. As Davis neared the hospital, local law enforcement had set up a roadblock for Davis. After the officers realized the situation, they released Davis to continue toward the hospital. Once at the hospital, Whitt was carried inside the emergency room and her boyfriend, Davis, was arrested for driving under the influence and escorted to jail.
“He didn’t know if I was alive or dead for about four hours,” Whitt said.
After the wreck, Whitt required an extended stay at the hospital.
“I was in [the] ICU for 7-10 days, and then I was taken up to the TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) unit, and I stayed there for three and a half months,” Whitt said.
Over the course of the next three months, Whitt had to go through multiple programs and relearn everyday functions.
“[I had to relearn] everything; how to walk, how to talk, how to feed myself, physical exercise, how to go out in the community,” Whitt said. “ [I also went through] speech therapy, physical therapy and psychological occupational therapy.”
Even after extensive therapy, Whitt still has lasting effects today.
“I had my long-term memory; I could remember things long term, but short term is impacted… that’s why I have to write everything down or put in it my phone, and word retrieval is an issue too,” Whitt said.
Word retrieval is the process of identifying the word needed to complete a thought. For instance, Whitt can see a rose and know what it is, but when it comes time to produce a sentence, she can’t seem to find the word to use.
The other driver was not identified until three days after the accident when the man’s mother gave him up to the police.
“The day after my accident, he was playing softball with his friends, drinking beer,” Whitt said. “He had no idea. When I heard that, it was pretty alarming.”
According to Whitt, when the case was taken to court, the defendant was ordered to pay a small fine, and his insur- ance company had to pay for the sign damage. Whitt calls it a “slap on the wrist.”
According to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, a level five DWI can obtain the punishment of a $200 fine, a minimum jail sentence of 24 hours and a maximum of 60 days. According to dui.drivinglaws.org, in most cases a judge will waive the jail sentence in favor of a 30-day revocation of the offender’s driver’s license.
Whitt’s advice for how to avoid situations like hers from occuring is simple:
“Have designated drivers, don’t let people leave bars and get into cars… or put people that drive while intoxicated in prison.”
– By Jessica Kolomichuk