An Open Letter to all Parents of Young People

Drinking and driving continues to claim the lives of innocent victims in North America

The following letter was published in The Golden Sun in Golden, British Columbia. It has since appeared in newspapers across Canada.

This is an open letter to all parents, of all young people everywhere. I am writing in response to some of the questions you ask me daily. I am not just one police officer; I represent every officer in every city and town in Canada.

You may know me only as the cop who gave you a ticket last summer, but I also am the guy who lives down the street from you. I am the parent of three children, and I share with you the same hope, ambition and dreams that you have for your children. I am faced with the same problems that you have. I share with you those moments of agony and ecstasy. I share with you the feeling of shame, guilt and disappointment when my boy or girl gets into trouble. I am also angry and sick at heart with trying to do my job and being tagged the bad guy, when all I have ever wanted was to avert the kind of tragedy I have just witnessed.

The scene was a long stretch of highway with a sharp curve at one end. It had been raining and the roads were slick. A car travelling in excess of 80 m.p.h. (129km/h) missed the curve and plowed into an embankment where it became airborne and struck a tree. At this point, two of the three young passengers were hurled from the vehicle, one into the tree, the other into the roadway where the car landed on him, snuffing out his life like a discarded cigarette on the asphalt. He was killed instantly. He was the lucky one.

The girl thrown into the tree had her neck broken and although she was voted queen of the senior prom and most likely to succeed, she will live and relive that terrible moment over again many times.

By the time I arrived the car had come to rest on its top, the broken wheels had stopped spinning. Smoke and steam were pouring out of the engine, ripped from its mounting by a terrible force. An eerie calm had settled over the scene and it appeared deserted except for one lone person leaning against the car for support.

The driver was conscious, but in shock, and was unable to free himself from under the bent and twisted steering column. His face will be forever scarred by deep cuts from broken glass and jagged metal. Those cuts will heal but the ones inside cannot be touched by the skilled surgeon's scalpel.

The third passenger had almost stopped bleeding. The seat and his clothing were covered in blood from an artery cut in his arm by the broken bone end that protruded from his forearm just below the elbow. His breath came in gasps as he tried desperately to suck air past his blood-filled airway. He was unable to speak and his eyes, bulged and fixed on me pleadingly, were the only communication that he was terrified and needed my help. I felt a pang of guilt and recognized him as a boy I let off with a warning the other night for an open container of alcohol in his car. Maybe if I had cited him then, he would still be alive now. Who knows? I don't.

He died soundlessly in my arms, his pale blue eyes staring vacantly as if trying to see into the future he would never have. I remembered watching him playing basketball and wondered what would happen to the scholarship he would never use.
Dully my mind focused on a loud screaming and I identified it as the girl who was thrown from the vehicle. I raced to her with a blanket but was afraid to move her. Her head was tilted at an exaggerated angle. She seemed unaware of my presence and whimpered like a little child for her mother. In the distance, I heard the mournful wail of the ambulance winding its way through the rainy night. I was filled with incredible grief at the waste of so valuable a resource, our youth.

Removing the dead and injured, I stood by, watching as hot tears mingled with rain and dripped off my cheeks.

You ask me why did this happen? It happened because a young person, stoned out of his mind, thought he could handle two tons of hurtling death at 80 m.p.h.. It happened because an adult, trying to be a "good guy," bought for or sold to some minor a case of beer. It happened because you as parents weren't concerned enough about your child to know where he was and what he was doing, and you were unconcerned about minors and alcohol abuse and would rather blame me for harassing them when I was only trying to prevent this kind of tragedy. It happened because as people say, you believe this sort of thing only happens to someone else.

I become sick with anger and frustration when I think of parents and leaders who believe a little bit of alcohol won't hurt anything. I am filled with contempt for those people who propose lowering the drinking age because they will get booze anyway, so why not make it legal. I am frustrated with laws, court rulings and other legal maneuverings that restrict my ability to do my job in preventing this kind of tragedy.

I spent several hours on reports and now I will take several months trying to erase from my memory the details of that night. I will not be alone. The driver will recover and spend the rest of his life trying to forget.

Yes I am angry, and I pray to God that I might never have to face another parent in the middle of the night and say your daughter, Susan, or your son, Bill, has just been killed in a car accident. For your sake, I hope it doesn't happen to you but if you continue to regard alcohol abuse as part of growing up, then please keep your porch light on because some cold, rainy night you will find me at your doorstep, staring at my feet with a message of death for you.

-Corporal Dale Martel