WESTMINSTER : Drunk-Driving Video Project Is Launched : DMV Provides a Captive Audience

Nancy Kryder waited in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles office here Monday to get a name change on her license, but she didn’t care for the videotapes that played on a television screen a few feet away.

After losing three friends in separate drunk-driving accidents in just the last few weeks, Kryder cringed at the thought of watching sometimes-graphic pictures of the effects of alcohol on drivers, she said. But then she realized that was just the idea.

“I didn’t want to come here and have to think about death,” the Fountain Valley woman said. “The (tapes) are making me nauseous, to be honest, but I’m glad people are seeing this.”

What people in Westminster will be seeing through the holiday season as they wait in those inevitable DMV lines are up to four hours’ worth of tapes on road safety in general and the danger of drunk-driving in particular.

To decrease alcohol-related traffic accidents, the Orange County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving is organizing the video program through the $1,000 donation of a local man whose wife was killed by a drunk driver last year.

If successful in Westminster, MADD organizers hope to repeat the program at DMV offices throughout the county.

MADD tried a similar test program at the Westminster office a year ago, but the result was dismal. Not only did someone walk off unnoticed with the group’s videocassette recorder, but the thief also took the tape inside--the only copy of the drunk-driving program. This year, the VCR is bolted down, and MADD made copies of the tape.

The timing of the video program is intentional. In the past, alcohol-related crashes have claimed more than 2,000 lives a year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day alone.

For the fifth year in a row, MADD also is passing out red ribbons and asking drivers to tie them onto their antennas as a symbol of sober driving and a safe holiday season.

On Monday, the volume on MADD’s TV set was just low enough not to bother the uninterested among those in the DMV line. But with the wait for service prolonged by a downed computer system, most seemed to pay some attention to the graphic shots of drunk-driving crashes, interviews with victims, and other educational announcements that were broadcast.

“Did you see that?” one person asked after a particularly brutal crash. “That guy must be crazy!” said another.

“The time goes by a lot quicker when you have something like this to watch,” said Rose Giuliono of Fountain Valley, who came to the DMV office to renew her license but also wound up learning from the videos that beginning this year in California, a person is considered drunk if his or her blood-alcohol level is 0.08% or above. The previous limit was 0.10.

“People have become so much more conscious in the last few years of the fact that drunk driving is a crime, and not just considered an accident,” said Janet Cater, administrator of MADD’s Orange County chapter. “We’re trying to reinforce that idea.”