A former Texas Tech college student has been sent to prison for drunk driving and killing a young woman. While he was out on bail prior to his prison sentence, he set up a program to help students avoid being in drunk driving situations like he was. His hope is that this program will prevent other students from making the same mistakes he made.
The incident happened when the former college student drove home drunk. He hit a young woman riding a bicycle and killed her. While out on bail, he enrolled at University of Texas Arlington and started developing a safe ride program on campus. The program is called Gallop Safe Ride and will be student-run. The young man’s sister will be running the program while he is in jail, and they hope to have it up and running before he is released from jail.
The program will be a free service for anyone too drunk to drive. A person can call for a ride, and a driver will be dispatched to take the person home anywhere in Arlington. This is a non-profit program that hopes to prevent future drunk driving accidents from happening. The program already has cars that can be used for pick-up, but they still need additional sponsors.
The Texas college student is currently serving his drunk driving sentence and will be released in May. Currently, the university does not offer ride-home service, but it does offer escort service for walking home during late-night hours. This program will be an addition to that service. Drunk driving accidents that result in death are tragic and unfortunate events. Texas courts can help families deal with loss and provide support in preventing future drunk driving accidents from happening again.
Source: CBS DFW, “Convicted Drunk Driver Develops Safe Ride Program“, Arezow Doost, April 11, 2014