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Community Corner

Minnesota Teen's Tragic Death Drives Dixits to Combat Distracted Driving

The family of teen killed in distracted driving crash is using foundation created in her name to affect change. The Dixit family tells how they are, slowly but surely, moving forward, and making their daughter proud. Sponsored by Grape Nuts.

About this sponsorship: In honor of the 60th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary’s historic ascent of Mount Everest, Patch and Grape-Nuts are teaming up to highlight those who inspire people around them to climb their own mountains.
Shreya Dixit could have taken the bus to her parents' home in Eden Prairie that night. That was the plan when the University of Wisconsin student woke up that morning, before she learned she would be able to catch a ride with a friend who was driving to the Twin Cities that night.
When she and two other friends were getting into the car for that trip, she could have gotten into the back seat instead of the front passenger seat.
The driver could have, when she realized roughly a third of the way into their journey that she needed a napkin, asked one of her three passengers to hand it to her.
Or, as has happened an infinite number of times before and since, a driver could have taken their eyes off the road — to reach for a cell phone, a napkin, a CD or whatever — for just a few seconds, looked back up and continued on their journey without incident.
But none of those things happened on Nov. 1, 2007. Instead Shreya was sitting in the front passenger seat when the car she was riding in swerved off I-94 and slammed into a bridge support about 45 minutes west of Madison. Shreya was killed almost instantly. The driver and other two passengers walked away unscratched.
Since then, Shreya's immediate family — dad Vijay, mom Nayha and sister Rekha — has shed tears and mourned the loss of their loved one. But they have also taken steps to help other families avoid having to go through what they've experienced.
Patch: On Nov. 1, 2007, you experienced something no parent should ever have to go through. Please describe the events of that day.
Vijay Dixit: At quarter to seven, we got a call: “I'm leaving now.” After that we had our dinner and we waited for her. At quarter to 10 or so, we got a phone call from a lady (who) said Shreya was in an accident and she's hurt, so they're taking her by helicopter to the medical center. I said, “oh my God, that is definitely very bad.” She gave me the telephone number of the hospital, so I called the hospital in Mauston (the crash occurred under an overpass between the New Lisbon and Mauston exits on I-94). The lady told me they tried to revive her and she passed away. That is something, I tell you I cannot forget that word. It is just completely etched in my mind and heart and ears. Everywhere. I said, “what do you mean she passed away? She was just 19.” What else could I have said.
Patch: Since then you have started a foundation in Shreya's name and really done a lot of work to combat distracted driving. How did you get to a point where you could talk publicly about this intensely personal loss?
Vijay Dixit: Time stood still (immediately after Shreya's death). Since then, time has literally crawled for us. Things keep moving at the same speed around us, but we seem to be kind of facing it in a very slow pace. It's been more than five years and that void, that pain, deep inside our emotional makeup, is never going to go away. But what we have done is we have patched it, covered it up with a layer of activities. that keep the wound from getting any worse. (The foundation) is something that just came up during a discussion with one of our grief counselors. She said we had to do something other than just grieve. My wife (brought up) Susan G. Komen. “Her sisters founded this foundation, and they're doing a lot for breast cancer.” She said we could do something like that. (The counselor) got us in touch with some people who had done some nonprofit foundation work, and within a few months we had the foundation going. And of course the foundation itself was not it. We got a lot of emotional support from Shreya's close friends and their parents. It was phenomenal. We sat down with three or four of her close friends one day and they said, “let's do a walk.” And this is how it started.
Patch: Will there every be a point with the Foundation, the walk or other things you're doing where you'll be able to say “mission accomplished”, that you've accomplished everything you set out to?
Vijay Dixit: I do not think I will ever have that “mission accomplished” badge, because the problem is multi-faceted. It is multi-dimensional, multi-directional, across demographics. It is such a complicated and such a deep-rooted problem in our society. There's nothing wrong in setting a goal of zero deaths from distraction, but no, it will never happen in our lifetime and I don't know where this will lead. I am trying to hit the problem of distraction and hoping that death rate from distractions goes down. and that is what our current goal is and what our goal will remain. If we lost 100 last year, I hope we lose 10 (this year). It's not that those 10 are not important. Preferably it would be zero, but that zero never happens. Distraction today is caused by texting, eating in the car, doing some other things, smoking, shaving in a car, putting on makeup, activities that we do. What type of distraction will occur 3 or 5 years from now courtesy of technology? We do not know. We are talking about minimization. We are not in the business of elimination. That is our goal: Building distraction-free driver communities one driver at a time.
Patch: How do you measure your success?
Vijay Dixit: The amount of response is our initial success factor, that more people are talking to us. Second, the biggest measure is when we see the rate of deaths, rate of crashes, coming down. We have seen that has turned around, but this latest data that came out, well, among teenagers it's still pretty bad. And joining the fold are the adults. They are pretty bad. And there are a lot of reasons, a lot of behaviors and beliefs that cause this.
Patch: What do you think Shreya would say about all that has come out of her death? 
Vijay Dixit: That was the primary motivating factor when we stated this foundation. It was hurtful, but at the same time this is the question we asked: “If we told Shreya we were doing this, what would she say?” The word she would use would be, “Dad, I'm proud of you. Mom, I'm proud of you.” Another thing, and this is where my faith comes in: I'm a Hindu by religion and we believe in continuum of life. We feel that this body is in transitional stage, state of mind. So what you do, everything is preordained and this is what she wanted, and she had probably some mission left in her life, and we were blessed by God to be her parents. And she was supposed to do this much work and then leave, and we were preordained to do what we are doing now, and she was here to put us on that path … and leave. This is how I describe how faith has helped us to heal ourselves. She's physically gone, but she's still here and this is what her role was and our role is doing what we are doing, so she became an instrument in guiding us in this area, which I would not have done, and my wife would not have done. So we are very thankful to Shreya for leading us in this direction.

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