D.W.I.s Anonymous

That young man was clocked at 80 m.p.h. before he hit those people. The parents were killed instantly. The youngsters were injured critically. And that young man--it took 35 minutes with a blowtorch to get him off the dashboard.

Almost every person convicted of drunken driving in Phoenix, Ariz., must suffer through this eyewitness account of a Christmas Eve tragedy. The witness was Ernest I. Stewart, a professor of health education at Arizona State University. After he saw the crash, Stewart talked the city's chief magistrate into a new way of sobering drunken drivers, who cause roughly half the nation's auto deaths each year--a carnage that is always worst during the holiday season.

With the support of Arizona State, Stewart organized the Phoenix Alcohol Research and Re-Education Project. He persuaded municipal judges to order hundreds of local citizens convicted of D.W.I. (Driving While Intoxicated) to attend his four-week course or face the loss of their operator's licenses. Each Wednesday night as many as 130 offenders gather in a courtroom for classes that begin with Stewart's description of the Christmas Eve tragedy. "I'm afraid of you," he says. "I don't want you to kill me and my wife." He shows films depicting accidents so bloody that occasionally a student gags and rushes from the room.

One scene shows a driver awakening in a hospital to discover that he is missing a leg. Stewart also demonstrates how alcohol retards reaction time and causes personality changes that impair judgment. He recites a litany of grim statistics on highway slaughter.

Every student is asked to write an anonymous summary of the circumstances that led to his arrest. At sessions that often turn into group therapy, the classes discuss the summaries written by past students. Stewart has concluded that the D.W.I, offender is generally an individual under pressure, anxious about financial or domestic troubles. He is so wrapped up in his own worries that he cannot comprehend the reasons for society's concern with drunken driving. Because of this picture, Stewart's approach now includes more counseling. "Sympathy, insight and patience," he says, "are the keys to working with a person in this state of mind." So far, the project has been an impressive success. Of 2,000 graduates since 1966, fewer than ten of them have been rearrested in Phoenix on a D.W.I, charge. The American Automobile Association is so pleased with the results that this month it will start filming a movie on Stewart's course for distribution throughout the U.S.

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