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First I'd like to intoroduce myself. My name is Kim Talbot, and I graduated high school in 1988 and I entered Towson State University as a total, independent, walking person. When I graduated from Towson State I was a dependent person in a wheelchair because of something that could have been completely avoided.

On July 8, 1992, I was standing behind a parked car. At that time, a speeding car going about 50 miles an hour slammed into me, leaving me pinned in between the two cars. And if you're wondering if I felt the hit, I felt everything. I also saw my legs collapse in front of me, gushing with blood. When I finally woke up from the pain, I could see the fright in the paramedic's eyes, and at that point, I knew I was dying. I had a less than ten percent chance of survival. When I arrived at the hospital, my right leg was almost completely severed, my left leg was holding on by a thread, my pelvis was crushed, and I was bleeding internally so bad that they needed to give me 14 pints of blood just to give me a fighting chance. And let me remind you that the human body only holds 9 pints of blood.

What I just described, the hit, the crash, 50 miles per hour of a car not stopping, all the pain that I just described, was just one night. It started there. I had several, several nights with the same pain intensity. I experienced so much pain that they had to give me major doses of morphine and an epidural in my spine, and that did not ease my pain. For my first two weeks in the hospital, I laid in bed with open wounds. And when I say open wounds, that usually ... When someone gets their leg amputated, they can sew it up right away. But that wasn't the case in my situation. I needed eight surgeries to get all the pieces of the car and the road out of my body. And after each surgery, more and more of my legs were missing. And every hour on the hour, they would wrap my legs in gauze, wide open, and wrap them in gauze. And every hour on the hour they had to pull the gauze off, and with each pull came pieces of my legs. No one should ever have to go through that much pain, especially if it could have been avoided.

That's an example of my physical pain. Just one example. And my emotional ... I shared rooms with people that were dying. I was an athelete, I lived for sports, and people who are atheletes, if they take your legs away, and see how you feel, and that's how I feel. I have dreams that I'm running and walking, and just doing everything that I used to do, and I wake up, and it's a very, very gruesome reality in the morning.

I wasn't the only one that was affected by this. It starts with the crash. It starts with the offender, with the person that hit me, with himself, and his friends, his family, and then it goes on to me. And then it goes from me to my friends and to my family. And to give you an idea of two people in my family that have really been affected, I have 2 little sisters, and they were 6 and 9 at the time of the crash, and that's an awful lot of grief for a 6 and 9 year old to deal with. and they still deal with it today. They thought I was invincible. And they play sports, and when I'm sitting on the sideline in a wheelchair, it's hard for them to be out there. This is what Theresa wrote when she was 8 years old.

My name is Theresa I'm eight years old. I was very sad when I heard Kim was hit by a car. Even though I'm only eight years old, I think that drunk driving is really bad. The point is Kim was hurt on the outside and I was hurt on the inside. I felt like I was shot in the heart when I heard Kim was in the accident. That's what makes me sad.

My name is Kristin, I'm 11 years old. The hardest feeling I had when I heard Kim was in an accident was believing it was true and that it really happened. He [the drunk driver] will never go through the pain that Kim and my family go through. It's like a nightmare that shatters all of someone's dreams.

And then you say to yourself, well, why would anybody want anybody to go through this much pain? And the first thing that everybody would say is, of course I would never want, or intentionally do that to somebody, I would never cause that harm. But the point is that whether it's intentional or it's not intentional, the same amount of damage occurs. Your car is a weapon. It is a lethal weapon, and it could cause just as much damage that a knife or a gun could, and maybe even more. I think that people need to realize and everybody needs to realize that you have the power to save lives.

Saving lives isn't just rescuing someone from a fire or someone from drowning. If you stop yourself or anybody else from getting in the car, you have saved a life. that is a lot of power to think about. You know, it kills me to think, and this is something that I think about every day now, that I had three extra chances that I would not be talking about this right now. There were three people in the car with the person that hit me. They all had the power, and they didn't use it. I had three extra chances that I would not be talking about this.

I have not been an angel my whole life, and that's why I like to go out and speak to young people, and speak to them as a peer. Because I've been through it. I know what everybody's going through in the stages of their life. It's very difficult for me to talk about this. It's very difficult to go to schools and talk about this and see the basketball courts and see the baseball courts, and just know that I've been there, that I'm here because, and I'm talking about this because I am an example. I am a living proof of reality, and the reality is that it will happen. It will happen to you. Anybody who listens to this will think that it won't happen to them. I didn't think it would happen to me. I know that Brian [the man that hit Kim while driving drunk] didn't think it would happen to him, but it did. And I am reality, and I just hope that what I have to say, that if anyone comes into a situation, that they will hear my voice, and they will take what I say, and just let it go over and over in their mind. Because hopefully that will give you the power to save lives.

- Kim Talbot

Q. Could you say again what happened to the driver of the car?

A. He was sentenced to four months in jail. Maryland laws are very, very lenient, but since then, I have tried to get a law implemented, and it was just passed a year and a half ago, and it's now a more serious crime. But then, his sentence in jail is nothing compared to what he will see every day. He sees my legs crushed in front of him. It was very graphic. And he saw everything, and so did the three people in the car with him, and he will live with that nightmare for the rest of his life.

Q. Is there anything else you would like to say?

A. Just another thing, I think that the worst thing that ever came out were those tables that tell you how much you can drink, and feel okay. I have a friend that had, what, three beers? And he's now a quadraplegic. And he'd be the first one to tell you that he didn't know that three beers would affect him, and it did, and now he's dealing with this for the rest of his life.