Reformed drink-driver puts at-risk youth on Right Track

Julian Hetaraka says he felt like a murderer after the car accident. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Julian Hetaraka will always have his father's death on his conscience - but now he's trying to warn others off doing what he did.

Mr Hetaraka, 30, had been drinking moderately all day while preparing food at his partner's birthday party before he drove his father home at 8pm.

When he turned at an intersection, he didn't see the car that smashed into the passenger side where his father was sitting. The 62-year-old died in hospital three days later.

"I felt guilty," Julian Hetaraka said. "I felt like a murderer. There were days when I just didn't want to get up out of bed."

Now he is warning other drink-drivers by telling his story in a programme called the Right Track, a 42-hour course that teaches 15 young people at a time about the consequences of dangerous driving.

The Auckland City Council paid for the programme for a year but dropped it last year in road safety funding cuts. It now runs only in Waitakere and Rodney.

More than 200 NZ artists have provided works for a charity exhibition that opened last night at the ASB Showgrounds to raise money to revive the programme in Auckland.

Auckland Youth Court Judge Tony Fitzgerald inspired art curator Liz Caughey to raise funds for the programme. Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft spoke at the opening.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, who also spoke, said she was "always interested in seeing what's working and backing it if it does".

For Mr Hetaraka, the accident that killed his father was his first drink-driving offence. When he left the party at the house of his partner's parents to drive his father home, he did not believe he was drunk.

"I was helping out preparing food and stuff, but what I failed to do was not having anything to eat," he said.

"My father-in-law and mother-in-law both, if they knew that I was intoxicated they wouldn't have let me drive home at all. I felt fine."

But he now accepts that the cause of the accident "would have been the alcohol".

Police initially wanted to charge him with manslaughter. "I would have been looking at five years' imprisonment," Mr Hetaraka said.

"But the charges got dropped to a lesser charge. The penalty for that was 150 hours' community service, and pay reparation to the other driver, and also I had to do the Right Track programme."

Over four weeks of evenings and weekends, the programme brings young first-time driving offenders face to face with firefighters who have cut victims out of smashed cars, funeral directors who see their horrific injuries, the Otara Spinal Unit where many of the victims end up, and with victims themselves who tell their own stories.

"It made me think a lot," Mr Hetaraka said.

He has reduced his speed, stopped drink-driving, and has become "quite an advocate" when he sees friends drinking too much.

"I say to them, 'How many have you had? Maybe it's best to leave your car here and catch a taxi home'," he said.

"Being a presenter now and sharing my experience with the ones that come on the programme, I think if I can just touch one person it's good enough for me."

SUPPORT THE TRUST
The Braveheart Youth Trust's art show, launched at the ASB Showgrounds last night, will be open from 10am-4pm until Sunday. $10 entry. braveheart.org.nz