Tree’s ornaments recall DWI’s toll

• By SONIA SMITH
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Dec 7, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Twitter
• Social Media

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

For those who have lost loved ones to drunk drivers, the holidays only magnify their absence.

In an effort to remember those lost and call attention to the problem, Mothers Against Drunk Driving dedicated a memorial Christmas tree at a Saturday afternoon ceremony at State Police Headquarters.

Baton Rouge City Constable Reginald Brown led in prayer a group of families and friends of victims of drunken driving.

Brown prayed that drunk driving, that “harmful disease that travels along our highways every day,” could be completely stamped out.
This year marks Brown’s fourth Christmas without his son, Reginald Brown Jr., who was killed by a drunk driver on Florida Boulevard Dec. 19, 2004.

In 2007, more than 13,000 people were killed nationally by drunk drivers, said Donna Tate, the executive director of MADD Louisiana.
The problem is especially bad in Louisiana, as only five other states have more alcohol-related traffic fatalities each year, Tate said.

“That’s another list we really, really don’t want to be on,” she said.

However, Louisiana has made some recent strides, Tate said, becoming one of the first to require convicted drunk drivers to have ignition interlock devices installed in their vehicles.

Last year on Louisiana roadways, 49 percent of the 985 traffic fatalities  were alcohol-related, Tate said. So far this year, only 25 percent of the 796 fatalities were alcohol related.

While these statistics are heartening, Tate said MADD’s mission is the complete eradication of drunk driving and urged  motorists to exercise caution and responsibility during the holidays, when the number of alcohol-related fatalities tends to spike.

“Not only are there more people traveling, but more people are traveling irresponsibly,” she said.

Craig Pike shared with the crowd the story of his daughter, Amanda Foreman, who was 30 when a drunk driver killed her on Jan. 18, 2007, in St. Helena Parish.

The middle school teacher and mother of two was an aspiring author, Pike said.

Foreman would be living out her bright future today, Pike  said, if it were not for “a very irresponsible young man who had very many opportunities to change his life and didn’t.”