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I am 62 years old. My son is dead because he drove home after two beers. Your adult child has driven home that way more times than you know. I am sharing this so you do not have to lose your child the way I lost mine. It started on a Saturday night last June. A state trooper knocked on my front door at 11:47 PM and told me Ryan was not coming home. My name is Karen Wallace. I am 62 years old. I have been married to my husband Robert for 38 years. We had one son. His name was Ryan. He was 28 years old. He worked at a small architecture firm in the city. He had a girlfriend named Emily he had been planning to propose to in September. He had bought the ring three weeks before he died. It was in his nightstand drawer. Robert and I found it when we cleaned out his apartment. Ryan had never had a DUI in his life. He drank socially. A beer at a backyard barbecue. A glass of wine at a family dinner. He was the most responsible 28 year old man I have ever known. That is the entire reason I am writing this. The drivers a state trooper notifies parents about losing are not reckless children. They are responsible adults who had two beers at a friend's house and felt completely fine. They are the designated drivers at weddings. They are the ones who drive home from a Saturday afternoon barbecue thinking they were sober the whole time. That is who is dying on a Saturday night on a country road. 9 out of 10 of those drivers felt completely fine when they got behind the wheel. They had two beers. They felt great. They were also over the legal limit. The legal limit in every state in this country is .08. They had no way to know. There is a thing about a blood alcohol of .08 that parents do not know. You cannot see it. A 28 year old man at .08 walks like a sober person. Speaks like a sober person. His eyes are clear. He can count backward from 100 by sevens. He can hold a normal conversation with his mother on the phone. He looks fine because at .08 he IS fine in every way you can observe. He just cannot drive. The visible signs of drunkenness, the slurred words and the unsteady walk, do not appear in most drivers until .14 or higher. By the time anyone can SEE someone is impaired, they are already at almost twice or three times the legal limit. Almost no one who dies on the road is at .14. The deaths happen between .08 and .12. That is the gap. That is what I am writing this to tell you. Your responsible adult child cannot tell when they are at .09 instead of .07. Your eye cannot tell either. Their friends cannot tell. Their girlfriend cannot tell. There is only one thing that can tell. I am going to tell you what it is. I wish I had known a year before my son died. Ryan was at a friend's backyard on a Saturday in June. It was a barbecue at his college friend Marcus's house. Eight people. Ryan and Marcus and six of their friends from college. They were just hanging out. Watching the game on a TV Marcus had set up in his backyard. Eating burgers. Drinking beer. Ryan had two beers across the afternoon. He left Marcus's house at 9:14 PM. He told Marcus in the driveway he was fine to drive. He was. He felt completely fine. He was wrong. The investigation report came back two weeks later. Ryan's blood alcohol at the time of the crash was .09. The legal limit is .08. He was over. There was no other vehicle. No animal in the road. No mechanical failure with the car. He drifted off the road on Route 47 at 9:31 PM and hit a tree. He drifted because he was over the legal limit and did not know it. The state trooper knocked on my front door at 11:47 PM. His name was Brady. He was about 47. Tall. Tired eyes. He told me as soon as I opened the door that there had been an accident. I knew before he finished the first sentence. Robert came out of the bedroom. Brady told us both at the same time. I do not remember what he said exactly. I remember the words "Ryan" and "did not survive" and then a long blur. Robert held me on the floor of the hallway for an hour. When I could speak again I asked Brady what had happened. He told me Ryan had been over the legal limit. He told me about the crash. He told me about Route 47. I asked him: how. Ryan only had two beers. Marcus had told us on the phone. The state trooper sat down on our living room couch. He pulled a small black device out of his patrol bag. He set it on our coffee table. He said: "Ma'am. This is the kind of device I carry. It is the same one I would have used on Ryan at the side of the road if he had been pulled over. It is a fuel cell sensor SoberSense Pro breathalyzer. Two beers in a 28 year old man can put him at .09 if he drinks them in a short window. The visible signs do not show. Most drivers I have ever pulled over felt completely fine. I am sorry." I looked at the device on my coffee table. I had never seen one before. I had been a mother for 28 years. I had told my son a hundred times not to drink and drive. I had never once thought to give him a way to actually check. The state trooper left at 2 AM. He took the device with him. I sat at my kitchen table for the rest of the night thinking about it. Ryan's funeral was eight days after he died. Marcus was there. So were the other six friends who had been at the barbecue. They sat in the front row across from Robert and me. They were all 28 years old. They all looked completely destroyed. After the service, Marcus came up to me at the reception. He had been Ryan's best friend since they were freshmen in college. Marcus said: "Mrs. Wallace. I have to tell you something." I said: "tell me." He said: "Ryan and I had been talking about getting one of those breathalyzers. He had read about them in an article. He told me a month ago he was going to buy one. He was going to keep it in his glove compartment. He had not bought it yet." I did not know what to say. Marcus said: "I should have bought one for him. I should have just bought it. I am sorry." I held him on the steps of the funeral home until he stopped crying. He was the last person to talk to my son. I went home that night and I bought eight SoberSense Pro Breathalyzers on my phone in the kitchen. i got mine here for who ever is interested https://trysobersense.com/products/sobersense-pro-breathalyzer One for Marcus. One for each of the six friends who had been at the barbecue. One for myself. They arrived the next week. I drove each one to each friend personally. I sat in their kitchens or their living rooms. I gave them the device. I made them open it in front of me. I made them blow into it three times. I made them tell me the number they got. I told them what Ryan had been planning to do. I told them: "Ryan was going to buy these. He did not get a chance. I want you to have what he was going to have." I have been to each of their houses three times since then. I check in every two months. I ask them when they last used the device. I ask them what number they got. In 11 months I have asked 89 times. 13 of those times the answer was over .08. 13 times one of Ryan's friends called an Uber instead of driving home. 13 times I felt my son was still in the room with us. If you are a parent of an adult child reading this, your child is not the reckless one I am writing about. Your child does not drink and drive. Your child is the responsible one. The kind one. The one you raised right. That is exactly who I am writing about. The 28 year olds who die on country roads are not reckless. They are responsible. They are the ones who told their mother on the phone an hour earlier that they were having a great time. They are the ones who walked normally to their car. They are the ones who recited their license plate at the door. They are the ones who had two beers and felt completely fine. You can do for your child this week what I did not do for mine. Get a SoberSense Pro breathalyzer. Get one for your child. Get one for each of your child's closest friends if you can. Make them open it in front of you. Make them blow into it three times. Make them tell you the number they got. Then check in with them every two months. Ask them when they last used it. Ask them what their number was. The device alone does not work. The conversation does. I had 28 years to start the conversation with Ryan. I never did. I had never heard of these devices. I did not know what to ask him. You have heard of one now. I am telling you. Ask your adult child this week. Here is where I got mine for whoever is interested: https://trysobersense.com/products/sobersense-pro-breathalyzer It costs $85. It uses the same fuel cell sensor that Brady carried in his patrol bag the night he knocked on my door. The legal limit is .08. The device tells your child the truth their feeling cannot. Ryan had been planning to buy one. He did not get a chance. If your child has been planning to buy something to protect themselves and has not gotten to it yet, you have a chance Ryan's mother did not. If you have lost someone to drinking and driving, or if you have an adult child you have been meaning to give a device to, please share their name below. The more of us who say their name out loud, the fewer of us who lose them. 🙏