I slammed on the brakes as hard as I could, but the car kept moving.
I didn't think it would ever stop.
The sound of the crash is like nothing I've ever heard before.
I was taking a bat and hitting it into a tin shed.
I couldn't move, let alone get out.
All I knew was that I was in pain.
They tried to get the dog to life, to cut the top of the car back to fill me out,
but it didn't work, so they ended up having to pull me through a little space through the window.
The whole crash just seemed to have happened in slow motion.
Our biggest worry was what we were going to wear the next day.
And then in just a matter of seconds it was all over.
Our life as we knew it was over.
You've waited for this day for years.
All your friends are driving. Now it's your turn.
How tough can it be?
Pass a little test, gas up the car, drive between the lines.
Not a problem.
Driving is a piece of cake, right?
The truth is, getting behind the wheel of a vehicle can change your life or end it in an instant.
That's why you've got to know what it takes to survive on the road.
But driving is more than following a lot of traffic laws.
It's a mindset, a style, an attitude.
The problem is, there's way too many people who think they've got driving down, but really don't.
They're all around you.
I'm a police officer who's investigated accidents for four years.
Anytime I arrive at an accident, I'm amazed at the damage that has been caused.
This one here was two teenagers, 18 years old.
They were both cheerleaders.
After a football game, they stopped at a local restaurant and bought something to eat.
And on the way home, they were speeding, lost control, and ran into a telephone pole.
Neither one of them survived.
These days, it seems that the need to get from point A to point B as fast as possible is top priority.
Like if the speed limit was 55, I drove 70.
65, I drove 80.
Because I wanted to go the fastest.
I didn't take traffic laws as rules.
I just thought of them as suggestions.
But I guess the thing is that I just never really paid much attention to them.
Well, I mean, I never really paid attention to the law much or anything.
I mean, if there was a cop in my rear-view mirror, yeah, but as soon as he was gone, I was out of there.
While a lot of people ignore the laws, others skip out on being safe and responsible drivers.
Well, the day I got my license, I thought to myself, hey, I know what I'm doing.
No problems.
I was driving.
I never really thought much when I was driving.
I never was paying attention.
I was always doing something else, looking for something in my backpack and talking.
My car is pretty old, you know, but I never thought about how safe it was.
I didn't think about the tread on my tires or my brakes were good.
All I cared about was whether or not I had gas.
I never wore seatbelts because it was an inconvenience and it wasn't cool.
I just didn't like it.
And there's a third group of drivers turning the streets into nightmares.
They're easy to spot, the risk takers.
Yes, I did think I was invincible.
Nothing will happen to me. I can go as fast as I want.
I've always been the daredevil.
I thought there's no way I'm going to get in the wreck.
This could never happen.
There's a lot of peer pressure.
I mean, everybody just wants you to drive fast,
and they think it's cool to be the fastest, most dangerous driver.
You don't want to seem like you're scared or you're a wimp or anything, you know,
so you want them to like you, so you just go along with it.
My attitude that day was, it's Friday.
You think just because I've had a couple of drinks, I'm not going to drive?
No way.
Ignoring the rules, skipping safety, taking risks.
What have you got to lose?
Well, sometimes it's easy to think you can take big risks
and never suffer any consequences.
The trouble is, there are consequences.
I got one ticket, and I had to pay $40.
I paid $130 just for that one ticket.
That's like two weeks' worth of work for me.
The other one was for like $74, so it's pretty costly.
Fines are one thing, but traffic violations can also cause
your car insurance premiums to go through the roof.
My insurance company has two of my wrecks on there.
I have no tickets, fortunately, but those two wrecks
has already caused my insurance to raise.
I'm considered, I think it's, I'm considered high risk.
The accident and the tickets, I got two tickets.
But after all that, my insurance just skyrocketed.
I couldn't afford to drive a car anymore.
I still have a car, I just can't afford to drive it.
Believe it or not, a bad driving record can affect
most areas of your life.
I lost my license, and now I have to wait over a year
before I can get my license back.
And it's like really bad because I have to depend on
other people to drive me around now.
I could have had a great summer job, making deliveries.
They took one look at my driving record,
and they turned me down flat.
They said I was a risk.
I think you have to sit back once in a while
and maybe think a little bit ahead.
If you get tickets, if you get DWIs, if you have a record
of that sort, even MIPs, binary possession,
there are many corporations, the military, the police department,
the fire department, that will not accept you.
You will not be hired with a record like that.
The reality is, driving stupid is going to cost you.
But there's another price, a personal price.
It's a price you never want to pay.
And one of the times I was thrown through the passenger window
and landed in a puddle of water where I drowned.
I had some internal bleeding, my liver and my right lung
and my right kidney.
My brain suffered injury, so I had to learn everything.
I mean everything over again.
I think one of my arms, or hands, or something.
And my brain, I think that's all of that.
I think, I don't know.
I don't know.
I was at medical center for four and a half months.
I was in a coma there for six weeks.
Fractures to my skull and I lost hearing in my right ear.
I fractured my wrist.
One day I'm getting ready for volleyball practice.
Then the next, here I am.
There's numerous patients, kids who come in following car accidents.
Some of them are dead and some are permanently disfigured.
And some are paraplegics or quadriplegics.
Some will never be able to move below the neck.
Never be able to have kids.
Rely on somebody else to take care of them for the rest of their life.
Tim, he didn't make it.
The car crushed him.
When I went up to Adam's car, when I went up there, there was nothing left.
I don't think anybody could have survived it.
I can't express how hard it is to go up to a mother and knock on her door
and say, ma'am, I'm sorry, I have to inform you,
your son's been killed in an auto accident.
You live with their emotions for the rest of your life.
If I had my seatbelt on,
I probably would not have been thrown through the passenger window.
I may have gotten some internal injuries,
but they can always heal or they make equipment to adapt to whatever the problem is.
But with your brain, it never completely heals.
It will always stay injured for the rest of my life.
Of the number of accidents that we've made so many times,
the seatbelts are the only things that make a difference.
And there's such a drastic difference, the whole front of the car can be gone.
And if they were wearing the seatbelt, they're relatively uninjured.
Sometimes I had a lot to drink and sometimes I had a little.
But I always drove because I knew what I could handle.
I thought I knew what I could handle.
It was about an hour after the party and Amber had cuts and bruises all over her face.
And her mouth was bleeding.
I tried to shake her, but she didn't respond.
She just lay there.
There was nothing I could do for her.
Even the lightest drinking can significantly increase your odds of crashing.
I think if any person could come in and watch what we do as far as resuscitating people
and the kind of injuries that can be incurred from alcohol and driving
and just the result of being in a car with somebody that has been drinking,
they would really think twice about doing it.
Just the kind of trauma, the losing of limbs, the blood, the disfigurement,
they truly would think twice about doing it.
Driving stupid.
The actual consequences are endless.
Maybe these things will never happen to you, but maybe they will.
You can bet none of these ever counted on winding up a statistic.
It's a car full of kids, Friday night, partying.
As you can see on the tire, what might have helped this accident.
If I remember correctly, one of the individuals in the car did die.
They ran into an 18-wheeler.
This was a full-sized Cadillac at one time.
Having that accident, I learned the hard way, I think it was the hard way, to slow down.
The road signs and the laws are there for a reason.
To protect me, they're there to protect you.
Look more and drive for the other person instead of just driving for myself
because even if they aren't your fault, they're accidents
and every accident has a consequence to it.
You can never be too careful.
I mean, whether you're on wet roads or dry roads, dirt roads, icy roads, whatever,
you know, it doesn't matter, you just shouldn't take any chances.
It's very powerful.
I wouldn't mess around with something that has that much power
and you have very little control over such a large vehicle.
I would just drive normal and not mess around.
As a driver, these people's lives are in your hands
and if you don't have the consideration to at least be careful for yourself,
do it for the passengers.
Me now, I make sure I have a seatbelt and everybody else is wearing one too
because that was the most important thing.
I mean, we could have lost our lives.
Don't let anyone push you into driving stupid.
And don't even ride with anyone who drives that way.
Driving a car and doing things you shouldn't be doing in a car
like playing Russian roulette, eventually you're going to get burned.
So the best thing to do is just be cautious and be safe about it.
It's so easy to get distracted when you're driving, looking for a tape,
just taking your eyes off the road.
I mean, I'd say just don't let it happen.
Try to think about who you have in the car
and whether peer pressure is worth losing your car or losing your life
or losing your friend's life.
That's a big deal and I figured out that peer pressure is not worth it.
You can't just go around life not thinking anything's going to hurt you,
thinking you're invincible.
It's not going to be like that.
I can't bring Amber back and I can never undo what I've done.
All I can do is tell other people not to drink and drive ever.
They don't want to go through what I have.
Driving doesn't have to be a problem.
The pain is avoidable.
You can skip the heartache.
These people learn the hard way.
How are you going to learn?
844, we have a traffic accident.
Thank you.