TAMPA, Fla. — As you get ready to celebrate the New Year with family and friends, a teen who survived a near-fatal car crash is sharing her story while law enforcement reminds you to never drink and drive.
18-year-old Olivia Wiggins is a living reminder of the consequences when people aren’t responsible behind the wheel.
“I was extremely lucky, and like we say, I had angels watching over me to be that lucky,” Wiggins said.
Wiggins had just rung in the New Year for 2023. She was driving home from her friends when a drunk driver was coming her way on a one-way street.
She swerved to get out of the way and hit a tree.
“A broken collarbone, fractures in my skull and my face, punctured lungs,” said Wiggins.
ABC Action News first met the teen back in May as she was getting ready to graduate high school after her long recovery: she was in a medically induced coma for three weeks and in the hospital for about three months.
“You don’t want to be hit by a drunk driver, so don’t be that drunk driver that hits somebody else,” she said.
It’s the message echoed by local law enforcement, too.
“We need everybody to be responsible, drive safely, drive responsibly,” said Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw in a video on social media. “Don’t drink and drive, that buzzed driving is drunk driving.”
Advocates hope you’ll make a plan before you celebrate, like using a ride share, to ensure everyone gets home safely.
“When you’re drinking or having fun or whatever, and then you’re like okay, I’m just going to go home, I’ll take the back way, nobody’s going to be on the back road, but then there is somebody," said Wiggins. "You can have fun, but do it safely because you can take somebody’s life.”
There are other resources available to help people get home safely, including AAA’s Tow to Go program. For more information, click here.
A pile of rubble is what’s left of what had been the happy home that Victoria Sowell shared with her military veteran husband Casey and their son and daughter.
