Done with the Drunk Driver
Woman in the Middle | January 19, 2012Warning: This post is rated PG-13 for anger. You will undersand why.
In February 2010 a young woman who had had way too much to drink considering it was 9 pm even if it was Friday night, decided that my 17-year-old daughter, who had had a driver’s license for all of 2 months, was going too slow in the left hand lane of a four lane divided street near our home. My daughter knew she had to turn left in less than two miles and, as a newby driver, got over way in advance of said turn. Drunk girl barreled up behind newby driver and whipped around her and then whipped back in front of her again. One problem, the alcohol had impaired her cognitive abilities and she misjudged the distance and clipped the front right fender of my daughter’s car. The car then took my daughter on a wild and crazy spinning spree which ended up with her facing the wrong direction in the center median, rear bumper right up against a tree that sadly sacrificed its life to keep her from going any further on her wild journey.
The only thing that kept her from going into the opposite side of the road into oncoming traffic is the fact that a quarter of a mile before the really wide median began on this particular street. That and the tree, may it rest in peace.
I mention this because my recent jaunts to the DMV, both on Monday and on Tuesday of last week, were the result of this accident. Yep, almost two years later and we are STILL dealing with the fall out from the night that woman tried to hurt my daughter. Here is hoping that my family is finally done being impacted by this woman’s serious mistake.
Happily, other than the emotional fall out of being hit by a drunk driver, my daughter was not hurt. She found out that total strangers will stop and ask if you are OK. I hope she found out that her parents really are more concerned with her well-being than with her mistakes (she was afraid the accident was her fault and was scared to call us). She had a hard lesson in why you should never drive drunk and probably never will now. We learned what it takes to get a salvage title on a car in California. We learned that the Dodge Stratus was painted “shiny silver” for only one year, which is why the front right fender of her car is now a slightly different color, a little reminder of the accident. We also learned the terrible feeling of “what if.” What if our daughter had not been driving on the road with the wide median and she had ended up in the other lanes of traffic? What if ….
Based on small observations of the drunk woman (the Highway Patrol officers kept us way far away from her. They have probably dealt with angry parents before), I did not get the impression she was living a really fantastic life. But I don’t care if she was abducted by aliens at a young age and tortured, she tried to kill my kid and I am not really happy about that. The 90 days in jail she was sentenced and the restitution she is supposed to pay (still waiting for that) will never make up for that. I may forgive but I will not forget.
Recent Comments