# data[].attributes.body
Case study of R v Anderson

# data[].attributes.body
This picture is relevant because it shows someone behind the wheel holding a beer.

# data[].attributes.body
You can tell in this picture than there are empty cans falling out of this persons car which makes it easy to see they had been drinking.

# data[].attributes.body
This picture shows how dangerous impaired driving can be even if you don't cause an accident with someone else you're always running the risk of something awful happening like this.

# data[].attributes.body
The MADD website is the biggest supporter for people to drive sober.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Still #1 Cause of death on our Roadways https://madd.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/MADD-2021-Website-Redesign-Video-v06.mp4 The Mission of Mothers Against Drunk Driving®️ (MADD) is to: 338,000 injuries per year END drunk driving 43.6% of fatally injured drivers tested positive for drugs HELP FIGHT drugged driving 11,654 people killed in 2020 SUPPORT victims of these violent crimes 4,300 under 21 killed every...

# data[].attributes.body
This article is about a women who killed 3 people while drinking and driving.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article was originally published as "I Drove Drunk and Killed Three People" in the January 2005 issue of Cosmopolitan.

Saturday, Feb. 23, 2002, was the last normal day of my life. A week earlier, I'd started a new job at a hair salon in my hometown of Livermore, California - I loved styling hair - and I wanted to celebrate my first big career step. So that day, my friend Melissa and I went shopping and to a baby shower for my older sister. I had dinner at home and then put on the new white cashmere sweater, khakis, and boots I'd bought to wear that night.

Good Times

Around 7 p.m., I kicked off the night with a vodka tonic at T.G.I. Friday's, where Jennifer, a girl I knew from beauty school, waitressed. Then a bunch of us went to a friend's house to wait until Jenn got off work. When she arrived at 11 p.m., I drove her, my best friend, Kyle - he lived around the corner from me, and we hung out practically every day - and another pal to a local bar, the Livermore Saloon. I was 20 and underage, so I had a fake ID. But the bar didn't card me that night - you know, when pretty girls walk in, some bars don't check too closely.

I shared my second drink with Jenn, a Long Island iced tea - which is a strong cocktail - and talked to Kyle, who I had a really easygoing friendship with. We spotted people we knew, yelled out, "Hey, how you doing?" and enjoyed the music blasting. I was in such a good mood.

I don't remember ordering more drinks, but Jenn says I downed a vodka and 7 Up and a shot of Jagermeister. A few hours later, we all walked down the street to McKay's Bar and Grill. I was feeling a little bit tipsy but not drunk. At McKay's, Jenn says I ordered another Long Island iced tea. I don't remember drinking it.

Missing Pieces

I've had to rely on other people's memories to patch together the next few hours. When the bars closed, a bunch of us decided to meet up at our friend Danny's house. But at the bar, Jenn had seen a guy she liked, so she decided to leave with him instead of me. Before leaving, she says she warned me.

"Don't get behind the wheel," she said. "You've been drinking."

"I know," I apparently replied.

Shortly afterward, at about 2 a.m., I climbed behind the wheel of my 2000 Camaro. Kyle and four other guys we knew socially squeezed into the car with me - Kyle, A.J., and Matt McKaskey were in the backseat, Sean was crouched in the hatchback, and Matt Richardson was in the front passenger seat. That's a lot of people crammed into one car, but it was only a few miles to Danny's. We never got there.

I was going about 60 miles per hour on the same two-lane street I had taken every day to get to high school. I knew that road so well ... but that was sober. We were about halfway to Danny's house, just past the bridge, when I turned a corner and lost control of the car. The Camaro veered to the right and spun around, jumped onto the sidewalk, continued spinning, and then stopped as we smashed into an alder tree. The car was nearly torn in half.

I was the only one wearing a seat belt. The police found me half-conscious and still strapped in behind the bent and broken steering wheel. I had internal bleeding, a lacerated liver and spleen, a punctured colon, glass embedded along the right side of my head, and back fractures in four places. The three boys in the backseat - Kyle, A.J., and Matt McKaskey - were already dead when rescuers arrived. Sean was thrown out of the hatchback, and police found him unconscious 20 feet away with head, chest, and knee injuries. Matt Richardson had knee, wrist, and back injuries.

The police measured my blood alcohol content (BAC). It was 0.14 percent, almost twice the legal limit in California. As it turned out, all six of us in the car were too drunk to drive.

Warning Signs

Looking back on the person I was then, I had this conceited attitude, like, "I'm the shit." I was close to my parents but wanted to do what I pleased, when I pleased. I loved having a car for that very reason. My partying was very typical of people my age - sometimes I'd have a couple of beers, and other times I'd have a few mixed drinks. I got drunk for the same reason everyone else did. It helped me "loosen up" and have fun.

My parents always told me, "Be smart, be safe, and if you need a ride, call us." I even had dialed my mom a few times to pick me up when I'd had a few too many. But I never thought my partying would drag me down, even though I'd already had a drinking-and-driving scare.

It happened a year before the accident, when I was 19. After a night of partying at a club, I'd bickered with my boyfriend - I can't remember why - and began to drive home. When I decided to make a U-turn, I misjudged the distance and my car got stuck on a median.

The police stopped and gave me a breath test, and it read 0.06 percent BAC, which is over the legal 0.05 limit in California if you're under 21. The officers let me off with a warning, and I quickly fell back into a "no problem" mode. Now I wonder how different my life would be if I'd taken that warning seriously.

Reality Sets In

The morning after the crash, I woke up in an intensive-care unit, hooked up to machines and monitors, with a 6-inch wound on my belly from emergency surgery. I could barely move. My memory is hazy because of the pain medication, but I remember seeing my friend Melissa come into focus, standing next to the bed. She looked devastated. "Nicole, not everyone is OK," she said softly, staring right into my eyes. "Not everyone is OK," she repeated.

Despite my foggy brain, I knew what she meant: Our friends were dead.

I was hospitalized for six days. During that time, my parents were constantly by my side, but they didn't talk too much about what had happened. I guess they were just grateful that I was alive. For me, the whole ordeal was such a blur of pain and medication that the terrible outcome of my crash didn't sink in until I was back home ... and then reality hit me like a sledgehammer.

The physical pain was excruciating, but the thought of what I'd done was worse. The deaths of my friends weighed heavily on my mind. When I tried to sleep, I just wailed into my pillow. My mom heard me a few times, and she would come in and cry too, and we'd pray. I didn't want to get up or eat. I kept wanting Kyle to call, knowing deep down he never would again.

I first saw photographs of my car after the crash at my lawyer's office. I felt sick. The white frame was bent like a pretzel, and the seats were all twisted. I kept wondering, Why did I survive? The fact that I couldn't remember anything made it that much harder to comprehend. I had all these questions that I couldn't answer: W hy didn't I call a cab? Why didn't I make a different choice? Why didn't anyone take my keys away from me? I did a lot of crying.

I wanted to talk to people about the accident and even attend a candlelight vigil for the victims, but my lawyer advised against it until my criminal case was resolved. Unfortunately, this created the impression that I didn't care about what I'd done, which just wasn't true.

Subsequently, people in town directed a lot of anger at my family and me, and a few friends ditched me. When my parents went to the others' funerals while I was still in the hospital, people stared at them coldly. A month after the crash, this guy recognized me at a candy store and said, "You're the one who killed my friends. Bitch." I burst into tears and ran out of the store.

I was also trying to come to grips with the fact that I could be going to prison for 15 years or more. How had this happened? I was a normal girl, getting my cosmetology license, having fun with friends ... and all of a sudden I was headed for a state penitentiary.

Paying the Price

Nine months after the crash, in November 2002, I pled no contest to three counts of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated in return for a six-year prison sentence. I didn't want to try to convince anyone I was innocent. I knew I'd broken the law and taken the lives of three people, and I didn't want any more pain for their families or my own. I wanted to take responsibility for my actions.

The day I was sentenced was one of the hardest of my life. In the morning, family and a few close friends came to the house to say good-bye - it felt as if I was seeing them for the last time. Then we all went to court, where the parents of the dead boys told the judge how agonizing it was that they'd never hear their sons laugh again. Afterward, some said they could never forgive me.

Finally, I had a chance to apologize publicly. I sobbed as I told Kyle's, A.J.'s, and Matt's families how extremely sorry I was to have caused them so much pain. Then I was taken to a holding cell, and I spent those first hours of my sentence lying on a metal bench in the freezing cold. I'd never felt so alone.

I'm now 23 years old, and I've been incarcerated for more than two years at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. If I stay out of trouble, I'll be paroled on Christmas Eve, 2005. My parents live 100 miles away and visit once or twice a month. When they do, I try to make them laugh and show them I'm still me - despite the prison uniform.

High fences and huge rolls of barbed wire surround the prison. I wake up at 6 a.m. and work weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. as a clerk for a teacher in the jail's education program. I make 24 cents an hour. At night, I'm locked in the cell I share with seven other women ... and the lights go out at 11 p.m.

I constantly think about why I'm here and what I could have done differently. What if I hadn't driven home? What if I'd called my parents to pick me up? There are a million "what ifs." I know something I did brought pain to a lot of people. And I know that the Lord has forgiven me and I have to forgive myself ... but I don't know if that's possible. I try to handle my guilt by talking to God. And at night, I think about how I'm one day closer to going home.

I also think about Kyle, whom I miss so much. His mom has visited me twice. Maybe after I get out, we can talk to groups - together we have a powerful message. I want people to know that drunk-driving accidents happen to ordinary people. I was a happy, regular person, and now I'm in prison. It never crossed my mind that one little choice could have such a devastating impact.
Click to subscribe to the digital edition!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Nicole LaFreniere, as told to Jessica Kowal

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This article was originally published as "I Drove Drunk and Killed Three People" in the January 2005 issue of Cosmopolitan. Saturday, Feb. 23, 2002, was the last normal day of my life. A week earlier, I'd started a new job at a hair salon in my hometown of Livermore, California - I loved styling hair - and I wanted to celebrate my first big career step.

# data[].attributes.body
This article talks all about the numbers and how being impaired affects individuals behind the wheel.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Although traffic fatalities are lower than they were at the turn of the century, alcohol-related crashes still kill about 10,000 people per year in the United States, with alcohol being a factor in one out of three motor vehicle deaths.﻿﻿

Despite all the warnings, public awareness and educational programs, and stiffer penalties for violations, people will still get behind the wheel of their vehicles while intoxicated. Drunk driving numbers for high schoolers decreased by half between 1991 and 2012, but teens are still at risk whether they are the drivers or not.﻿﻿

How Dangerous Is Drinking and Driving?

According to a 2014 study, an adult driver with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08 is seven times more likely to be involved in a fatal motor vehicle crash than a sober driver. Young adult drivers (ages 21-34) with a 0.08 BAC are 12 times as likely to be in a fatal car crash than drivers who haven't had alcohol.﻿﻿

Basically, the more you drink, the more likely you are to have a fatal accident. The odds of having any vehicle accident, fatal or otherwise, increase at similar rates.﻿﻿ Here are the cold, hard facts.

Alcohol Increases Your Risk of a Crash

A 160-pound person drinking two 12-ounce beers within an hour would probably have a BAC of 0.04, well below the legal limits of driving under the influence, but 1.4 times more likely to have an accident than someone who is sober.﻿﻿

One of the problems with setting the legal limit for "drunk driving" at a blood-alcohol content level of 0.08 is it sends the message that if you are not yet legally drunk, you are therefore okay to drive.

Impairment Begins Below 0.08 BAC

The problem lies in the fact that impairment begins long before you reach the 0.08 level. Scientific research explicitly shows that some of the skills that you need to drive safely begin to deteriorate even at the 0.02 blood-alcohol level.﻿﻿

Is It Safe to Drink Just Two More Beers?

If you had those first two beers that raised your BAC to 0.04 and now you drink two more beers to raise your BAC to 0.08, your likelihood of an accident goes up drastically. At 0.08 BAC, a driver is 11 times more likely than the non-drinking driver to be involved in a crash. As the amount of alcohol in the driver's system rises numerically on the BAC scale, the likelihood of a traffic accident multiplies.﻿﻿

Now add two more beers to your total, you are up to having consumed a six-pack and have likely passed the 0.10 BAC level. Your likelihood of having an accident is now 48 times higher than the abstainer.

Two more beers: Hey, you've already had a six-pack, two more couldn't hurt, right? Except two more beers could put your BAC close to 0.15, at which point you are 380 times more likely to have an accident.

Play It Smart

Play it smart during weekends and holidays. If you plan to party away from home-and this includes on the water-be sure to appoint a designated driver for the car or operator of the boat.

Consider calling a cab or using a rideshare app to get yourself and your loved ones home safe and protect everyone else on the road. Better yet, if you are going to be drinking away from home, use those options to get to the party so you don't have a car handy that you'll be tempted to drive when your judgment is impaired by alcohol.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cold, Hard Facts About How Alcohol Impairs Your Driving Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Although traffic fatalities are lower than they were at the turn of the century, alcohol-related crashes still kill about 10,000 people per year in the United States, with alcohol being a factor in one out of three motor vehicle deaths.﻿﻿ Despite all the warnings, public awareness and educational programs, and stiffer penalties for violations, people will still get behind the wheel of their vehicles while intoxicated.

# data[].attributes.body
The confession of a man who was drunk driving and killed someone as a way to help encourage people to not drink and drive.

# data[].attributes.headline
High School Reenactment of Drunk Driving accident 

# data[].attributes.subject
High School Reenactment of Drunk Driving accident 

# data[].attributes.body
This video is of a reenactment of a drunk driving accident shown to a highschool so they can see the effects of it.

# data[].attributes.body
This video is made up of multiple car accidents caused by impaired drivers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A basic video show the aftermath of drunk driving. Contains graphic images of car accidents. I do not own any audio or video used in this video. It is strictly used just for the example of drunk driving accidents.