According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every day almost 30 people die in motor vehicle crashes involving an alcohol impaired driver.
Knoxville High School invited a speaker who talked to students today about her own first hand knowledge with the dangers of drunk driving.
Sarah Panzau Evans was an All-American volleyball player from Belleville who says she felt “invincible” in her early college years.
That’s why at the age of 21 she got behind the wheel with a blood alcohol level nearly four times the legal limit.
“I rebelled against everything that my mother said. Everything,” Panzau says. “As you can see, all those decision and all those life styles that I chose at that time, undoubtedly led me to the inevitable.”
Panzau Evans lost her left arm in a single vehicle crash that sent her green Saturn rolling four times, ejecting her through the year window.
Almost 40 surgeries were performed on her.
She emphasized that if students do find themselves involved with alcohol to not be afraid to call their parents for a ride, recalling a scene in the hospital where her mother was hurt that she hadn’t called her.
“She said, ‘because you should have known, as your mother I would have been there for you if you ever needed me,’” Panzau Evans says. “‘And you feared me.’”
Panzau Evans now travels with her presentation “Living Proof”.
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