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THE CONSEQUENCES OF DRUNK DRIVING
BY KAYLEIGH KARUTIS
The salmon-pink walls of Jean Karutis’s
office, coupled with the floral paintings and dried flower wreaths,
make the space look like a typical workplace: sanitary and neat,
if a bit impersonal. Look closer, though, and clues to Karutis’s
occupation begin to glimmer through the banality. Numerous hand-drawn
pictures wallpaper the tag board to her right, a stuffed puppy sits
on the ground to her left, and several stacks of papers perch on
her desktop, as trim and neat as skyscrapers. The most telling clue,
though, is pinned at the top of her tag board. It’s a bumper
sticker, white, with bold black printing. It says, “I’m
MADD because a drunk driver killed my brother.”
The woman behind the desk types rapidly on the laptop in front of
her. Her trim hair, speckled with salt and pepper gray at the temples,
is cropped stylishly short. She works as an alcohol and drug abuse
prevention educator, and the hand-drawn pictures are gifts from
students she’s worked with. The puppy is a tool she uses in
her “Apple-a-Day” classes at local schools. The bumper
sticker is a souvenir from MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving,
a tragic badge she received on September 8, 1999, when her brother
Joseph Klementowski was killed by a drunk driver.
She’s told the story of her brother many times: at victim-impact
panels, where she speaks to DWI offenders; at local schools, where
she teaches kids about the dangers of alcoholism and other substance
abuse; and at various community events. During one victim-impact
panel, she pulls out a worn, softened concert ticket from her bag.
In a steady, assured voice, she speaks. “This is a pit-seat
ticket to see the rock band REM at SPAC (Saratoga Performing Arts
Center). It was in Joe’s back pocket the night he was killed.”
Joseph Klementowski, as his sister will tell you, wasn’t a
complicated guy. A janitor at the local high school, he lived with
his father in his childhood home. His one obsession was music. Karutis
often brings up Joe’s love of music at victim-impact panels.
“People think I’m exaggerating when I say Joe had an
entire room completely full of music, but it’s the truth.
He loved music.” A large room in his home, says Karutis, was
filled from top to bottom with CDs, vinyls, cassettes, tape players,
and CD players. Naturally, Joe loved concerts too; almost every
weekend would find him driving the 30-minute ride to Saratoga, New
York, where SPAC would be hosting one musical act or another.
It was during a drive to one of those performances that Joe’s
car was struck head-on by an intoxicated driver going 80mph, effectively
crushing Joe’s tiny car and killing Joe before help was able
to arrive. At this point in her story, Karutis begins a slide show
showcasing pictures of Joe’s car. It’s barely recognizable,
the entire front and side mangled, the bumper akimbo, the windshield
cracked. Her voice breaks the silence.
“The man who killed Joe broke both legs in the crash, but
he was so drunk that he tried to walk.”
The slide show continues, and Karutis falls silent, pressing “play”
on a stereo by her side. A moment later, the somber, crackly tones
of Dave Matthews fill the room, accompanied by a lone guitar.
“Gravedigger, when you dig my grave, could you make it shallow
so that I can feel the rain?”
A picture of Joe as a young boy appears, wearing a baseball cap
and riding on a bicycle much too small for him, a huge smile stretched
across his face. It’s comical at first, but then the lyrics
to the song catch up with the moment at hand.
“Little Mikey Carson, '67 to '75… He rode his bike like
the devil until the day he died…”
***
Jean Karutis’s story is, unfortunately, not an isolated
case. According to the Mother’s Against Drunk Driving (MADD)
website, over 17,000 people were killed in alcohol-related traffic
accidents in 2003 alone. That’s approximately one death
every 31 minutes. Equally disturbing is the fact that in 2003,
about 40 percent of traffic deaths involved alcohol, a statistic
also found at MADD.org. During one victim-impact panel, a speaker
eloquently captured the sentiments of many victims: “All
that’s separating you and me from a drunk driver is a thin
yellow line, and that’s not enough.”
Groups like MADD are hard at work trying to make a difference
in the fight against drunk driving. Formed in 1980 by Candy Lightner
and a small group of mothers, MADD has grown from a single chapter
in California to over 600 chapters scattered across the United
States. MADD often sponsors events related to drunk driving prevention,
and its ads can be seen in many magazines and newspapers nation
wide.
Recognizing that drunk driving is a significant problem, many
victims turned their stories into teaching tools, hoping to prevent
further tragedy. An acquaintance of Jean Karutis’s and another
MADD member, Linda Campion, lost her daughter, Kathleen, to a
drunk driver. Campion often speaks at victim-impact panels and
is an active member of her area’s MADD chapter. That, though,
isn’t all Campion has done.
While driving with Jean Karutis through Amsterdam, New York, we
see a billboard looming in the distance, growing larger as the
car (adorned with MADD bumper stickers) speeds along. It showcases
a picture of a beautiful dark-haired young girl, strikingly printed
in black and white. Karutis comments on the billboard: “That’s
Linda Campion’s daughter, Kathleen, the one that was killed
by a drunk driver.” She goes on to explain that Linda used
her own money, out of her own pocket, in order to have the billboards
posted. It’s that kind of dedication that characterizes
many of the activists who have turned their grief into a weapon
against drunk driving.
At victim-impact panels, many victims, as well as recovered alcoholics,
can explain their stories in the hope that it will change the
minds of DWI offenders. Karutis explained her sentiments on speaking
to offenders: “I always hope that I changed one person’s
mind, just one, so that maybe the next time, [he or she] won’t
pick up the keys. I hope that’s enough to save someone’s
life.”
Though MADD is often the first organization people recall when
thinking about drunk driving, many other groups are actively trying
to curb drunk driving. Many of these groups focus on students
and underage drinking and driving as their main objective. SADD,
or Students Against Destructive Decisions, and YAERD, Young Adults
Educating Responsible Drinking, are two such groups. According
to its website, SADD has approximately 10,000 separate chapters
in junior highs, high schools, and colleges across the country.
YAERD describes its goal as “educating everyone about the
dangers of drinking and driving.” Both groups showcase unsettling
statistics on their websites, such as this one, found at SADD.org:
“Motor vehicle crashes remain the number one cause of death
among youth ages 15 to 20.”
City-based initiatives also try and prevent minors from drinking
and driving. One such initiative, showcased in the January 4,
2005, issue of the Los Angeles Times, is a video game that shows
students what it feels like to drive drunk. The game, called “Midtown
Madness,” is described in the article: “A computer
network puts everyone on the same set of streets, along with screaming
pedestrians who fling themselves out of harm’s way whenever
a car gets too close… The idea is to show users that no
matter how much control they think they have, police are likely
to notice the swerving, drifting and curb-hopping that can accompany
a six-pack.”
Targeting students seems a smart thing to do, considering the
statistics relating drunk driving to minors. According to the
MADD website, “…young drivers between 15 and 20 years
old are more often involved in alcohol-related crashes than any
other comparable age group. Alcohol-crash involvement rates…
and alcohol-crash risk all reach their peaks with young drivers,
with the peaks for fatal crashes occurring at age 21.” By
seeking out minors and students before they have the chance to
drink seriously, activists hope to instill good habits before
bad ones can be formed. This is one reason Jean Karutis decided
to go into drunk driving prevention after her brother was killed:
she hoped to change the minds of young people as early as possible.
Everyone, though, is at risk of becoming a victim of drunk driving,
despite the higher prevalence among young people. A particularly
unnerving statistic is listed on MADD’s “General Statistics”
page: approximately three out of every 10 Americans will be affected
by drunk driving sometime during their lifetime.
Almost everyone has a friend whose relative died or was injured
because of drunk driving. Many students know at least one or two
kids who died in a crash because they were intoxicated. The most
unsettling element of these deaths, though, is how easily they
could have been prevented. Drunk driving is arguably the most
preventable societal blight that Americans face. Jean Karutis
sums it up well during her talks at victim-impact panels: “Don’t
let them get into that car. Take the keys away; call them a cab;
just don’t let them drive away.”
***
At the close of her presentation, Jean Karutis turns off the stereo
with an audible click. The room is silent, broken only by the occasional
creak as someone shifts in his chair, or a cough as someone clears
his throat. A few sniffles break the silence, too. As Karutis resumes,
audience members hastily stuff Kleenex back into their bags, blink
their eyes a few times, and then return their gaze to her form at
the front of the room.
Jean Karutis speaks a few words about how her story could easily
be anyone’s story. Each and every person in the audience could
be in her place. Instead, they are sitting there because they made
the wrong choice: they got into their cars after drinking, putting
their lives, and the lives of others, at risk.
A moment later, Jean Karutis holds up the REM ticket. “Think
about the tickets you have in your own back pocket. They could be
concert tickets, but they could also be tickets to your son’s
graduation, your daughter’s concert, a wedding. Don’t
let those tickets go to waste.”
Picking up another object from the table in front of her, Jean raises
her hand once more. In it, she holds another ticket, different from
the REM one. It is, she explains, a ticket to see Lenny Kravitz
in concert at SPAC. It’s a great ticket, for the pit section,
the best spot in the house. “This was Joey’s ticket
too. He didn’t get to go to that concert because the date
on this ticket is September 12… and September 12 was his funeral.”
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