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 cover the tag board to her right, and a stuffed puppy sits on the ground to her left, while several stacks of papers perch on her desktop, 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, which reads, “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 the man 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 is mangled, the bumper is akimbo, and 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 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. 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, 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 target students mainly. 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 risks 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 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, or 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 a SPAC event. It’s a great ticket—it admits one to 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 the day of his funeral.”