Teen Drinking

There's an area north, then west of where I live, where you cross the Hood Canal Bridge which takes you to the northern tip of the Olympic Penninsula. When you hit Port Angeles and hang a left, there's a highway that goes up to the Olympic Mountains to a place called Hurricane Ridge, which I've written about here before.

It was on this road the accident happened. Another investigator joined me on a scene investigation in which we were asked to assess a driver's liability. Because the location was remote, the highway narrow and the tasks complex, I did not feel comfortable working the case alone. The investigator I brought with me was armed. We were as likely to encounter a cougar as we were a psycho.

What happened in the accident we were investigating was allegedly this:
The attorney's client, who is essence was our client, let's call him "Darren"... was asleep in the back seat of a male friend's car while driving the mountain road at night. The driver was drunk, 18, the front seat male passenger was 18 and had been drinking with him. As did our potential client Darren, also 18. They'd been friends since childhood.

What the driver contended was this:
A he took a curve, there was a pile of gravel that had been dumped before sunset by a road crew for laying out the following day.
The driver said he hit the gravel and that's what caused the accident.
The car flipped vertically from head (front end), to toe(rear end) before landing upside down in the bushes in a culvert by the side of side of the road.
Our guy Darren , the guy in the back seat who was sleeping or passed out drunk, remembered waking up after the accident on the roof of the car and climbed out through the broken windshield.

Everyone survived. Darren was the most injured, his cheekbone and eye orbit were shattered. His right knee was crushed, his right leg was broken.
His medical bills started off sky-high with the airlift.
And there were years of surgeries ahead guaranteed to send those medical bills into the stratosphere.

There was minimal insurance on the car Darren was driving. 25K per occurance, 50k per accident. Darren had no car and therefore, no auto insurance of his own.
Darren's parents had no auto or health insurance

So what's the victim of a drunk driver with the lowest of insurance limits to do?
Claim faulty road construction.
The sue the state.

Problem was it wasn't faulty road construction.

We measured the scene, the skid marks, photographed the road from all directions, correlated our scene sketch to the ones attached to the police report. We got pictures of chunks of wood ripped from massive tree trunks by the metal 2500 pound missile.

We both became one with the car, the road, the curve and the path it took when it went airborn and landed upside down in the tree.

There was no pile of gravel to be found anywhere. No road obstructions.

There was however, twice the legal limit of alcohol in the drivers blood. Just about the same amount Darren's.

Plus there was a road sign indicating a curve up ahead, a speed limit sign that said 35 mph. The car was going an estimated 65 mph.

We advised the attorneys not to take the case and they concurred.

Parents never know what their kids are up to once they start driving.
Auto accidents are the number one cause of death among teenagers. Alcohol ups the ante considerably.
So if you teach your kids nothing else, teach them about not getting into a car with anyone who's been drinking. Themselves included.
If you tell them this true story, maybe they'll even get the point.