Car crashes are the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 18 and 24.
Marianne Angelillo experienced this tragedy first hand when she lost her 17-year-old son Matthew in a car crash in Skaneateles in 2004.
Matthew and his friends had been drinking and decided to see how fast they could drive one of the boys’ father’s Ferrari. The driver, who had also been drinking, was going over 100 mph when he lost control of the car and hit a van. The driver, the other passenger and the couple in the van survived. Matthew did not.
“When you drink, you don’t think,” Angelillo said. “The more you drink, the more you think you’re okay to drive.”
Angelillo, a multimedia professional and photographer, came to the Marano Campus Center on Tuesday night as part of the “Drive Safe, Live Safe” presentation put on by the New York Governor’s Traffic Safety Council. She spoke to the audience about the dangers of drunk and distracted driving.
“You don’t even get a chance to pray for them,” Angelillo said. “They’re gone in an instant.”
According to Angelillo, 26 percent of all car crashes that involve cell phones, and drivers are eight times more likely to get into a car crash while using cell phones.
Angelillo said she is grateful that she gets to do this kind of work because it has helped her heal and grieve after her son’s death.
In addition to speaking engagements, she also wrote a book called “Sharing My Stones,” which describes how her family dealt with Matthew’s death.
“In 12 years I could have named this presentation so many different titles and I ended up with ‘Sharing My Stones’ because I was told that sometimes when you go through life and you have something that is so heavy and so sorrowful it’s like carrying around a bag of stones,” Angelillo said. “By sharing your sorrows with others, its like taking stones out of your bag and passing them around. A lot of my healing has come from sharing this particular story and my family’s journey on having your life change on a dime. I know that so many students in the last 12 years have taken endless stones from me and have lightened my load.”
Angelillo speaks to many different groups of people as part of her healing process, including high school and college students, victim impact panels with people who have been convicted of DUIs, jail ministry and bereaved parents. She said speaking with the parents is the most difficult, but she tries to give them hope.
“They’re the hardest ones the give hope to, to convince them that they’re going to be okay,” Angelillo said. “It’s so hard, it’s such an unnatural order of life.”
During the presentation, Angelillo played a video that she made about her son’s life. Matthew was an athlete who played football and lacrosse. He wanted to be an Air Force pilot and he loved nature. She included news clips in her video and footage from the trial of Steven Corsello, the driver of the car on that fatal night.
Corsello was convicted of second-degree vehicular manslaughter and second-degree assault as a result of the accident. He was sentenced to one to three years in state prison. He served two.
The night before his sentencing trial, Corsello walked down to the Angelillo’s house and read his statement to Angelillo and her husband.
“He looked at us and he told us how deeply, deeply sorry he was,” Angelillo said. “And of course we offered forgiveness, because it was a natural thing to hug our son’s friend and to wish him healing. We would not want to be the ones to stand between him and his healing.”
After Angelillo’s presentation, the audience members had the opportunity to participate in interactive activities and view displays from different organizations dedicated to promoting safe driving, such as Motorcycle Down, Oswego County’s Stop DWI and the New York State University Police Department.
There were display boards with facts and statistics, photos of people killed in car crashes and brochures with more information. Interactive activities included “drunk goggle” demonstrations and a drunk driving obstacle course.
Angelillo had a message for the audience. She stressed the importance of teaching young people about the dangers of distracted driving.
“It’s not just about drinking and driving, it’s now about distracted driving,” Angelillo said. “It’s realizing that at any given moment you could easily make a wrong decision. You could do irreparable harm to a family or yourself or your family.”
