Who:

Ashley Chieco, 26, was killed at around 6 PM of 8/16/13 in Old Bridge, New Jersey, when she drunkenly drove a stolen 2011 Hyundai Tucson and crashed into Dana S. Corrar, 55, from Old Bridge. The collision occurred in the southbound lanes of Route 18. Corrar drove a 2000 BMW 323.

Chieco died at the scene while Corrar was severely injured with fractures to both legs and ankles, rib injuries, a punctured lung, and cervical and spine damage. It is estimated that she will not walk for another year. Her daughter dropped out of college to care for her. She was a nurse, mother, and grandmother who had been homebound on a 35 mile drive when struck by Chieco, and it is thought that she might never return to work again.

Chieco, meanwhile, was a crisis counselor, psychology professor, and a recent graduate with a master’s degree in psychology. At the time of the collision, Chieco had traveling home to assist her father in celebrating his 58th birthday. She had recently left Martell’s Tiki Bar in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ, and was trying to drive 70 miles to reach her home in Wood-Ridge.

How:

Per various reports, Chieco entered Martell’s Tiki Bar at around 11 AM and had consumed numerous 20-ounce vodka-related drinks as well as shots at the bar before she mistook another vehicle for hers in the bar’s parking lot at 5:30 PM when she left. The bar had an established policy of requesting patrons leave their keys in their vehicles to make them easier to move. Chieco then drove north for 30 miles, swerving to avoid vehicles along the way, before she collided with Corrar. She drove the wrong way, northbound in the southbound lane, and caused the head-on collision. Her autopsied BAC was .189, and her stomach was empty.

Corrar’s attorney, Paul Edelstein, is suing Martells and states he believes the bartenders at Martell’s continued to serve Chieco despite her visible intoxication, and that there were no means to keep her from taking someone else’s vehicle and driving away while drunk. Chieco’s parents are also part of the suit against Martell’s, and state their daughter was over-served. The mayor of the borough, Vincent Barrella, argued that the license of the bar shouldn’t have been renewed until the case was completely resolved, but the Point Pleasant Beach council decided 4-0 to renew the license anyway.

Why:

This is another sad case of alcohol use leading to a fatality, as are 1 of every 3 traffic deaths in this country, year after year.

So many things went wrong that night, but I find myself siding with the suit against the bar. It is incredibly irresponsible to serve alcohol in a location where patrons are asked to leave their keys in their vehicles, and it would have been impossible not to notice a person as inebriated as Chieco was not capable of driving a vehicle. She should not have been allowed to enter any vehicles that night, and while she was ultimately responsible for her tragic death and the injuries imparted to Corrar, she would not have been in a position to drive away had the bar spent less time serving her alcohol and more time ensuring individuals were not allowed to drive away under the influence. A bar capable of tracking individuals’ tabs in order to obtain payment before patrons left is certainly a bar capable of calculating when individuals would not legally be capable of driving. Additionally, it is against the law to serve alcohol to patrons who are already drunk, and has been for decades.

Furthermore, the decision of the counsel to renew the license of the bar is as clear evidence as one needs of the corruption that becomes inevitable when morals and money collide. The bar was extremely irresponsible in its practices toward patrons and the counsel rewarded that irresponsibility in order to keep its funds flowing.

More broadly, this is also the result of a society with one of the highest legal drinking limits in the rich world, at .08, instead of at .02 – .05, the way it is in so many other countries.

The 2010 Tucson weighs 3357 lbs and comes with a “good” IIHS frontal score. It collided with a 2000 323 that weighs 3347 lbs, or almost exactly the Tucson’s weight, and also comes with a “good” frontal score.  As a result, each vehicle essentially ran into its twin, weight-wise, meaning neither vehicle had a significant advantage from a weight perspective.

Given the likely speeds of the collision (~65 mph), the collision likely imparted at least 643KJ of energy into each vehicle. Each vehicle’s frontal impact test simulates 243KJ of energy (a Tucson/323 impacting another at 40 mph). In other words, each driver faced 264% of the force she’d have experienced in the type of crash her car was rated for. Given the forces of the collision, I would have expected both drivers to have a fair, though low, chance of survival. However, the description of Corrar’s injuries shows the extent to which your life can be altered irrevocably, even as a survivor, from an auto collision. She has injuries she will never fully recover from, and her life trajectory has been permanently altered through no fault of her own, due to a set of circumstances wholly preventable and completely unrelated to her life.

This was ultimately a wholly preventable tragedy. There is *no* safe amount of alcohol you can consume when you plan to drive.

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