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# Want to drink and drive? Visit a morgue first
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/want-to-drink-and-drive-visit-a-morgue-first/
- Published: 2003-11-03T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:09:31.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Health, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By JAMIE WETHERBE Special to the Daily Press*

While there are plenty more drunks on the road, Los Angeles County prosecuted about 50,000 drunk driving cases last year, officials said. And to deter people from driving drunk, more judges have been sending offenders to hospitals and morgues to see what the results of their actions could be.

Los Angeles County about 15 years ago gave courts the option to sentence DUI offenders to hospitals and morgues to see first-hand the consequences of driving drunk — usually in addition to community service or jail time.

“People will come out saying, ‘this is the last time I’m ever going to have a drink,’” said Sandy Montalvo, director of the South Bay-Harbor-Long Beach court-referral community service program.

Los Angeles County’s hospital and morgue program handles 1,500 participants a year — typically minors, said Troy Legaspi, a registered nurse and director of the hospital program in Los Angeles County.

Participants watch slides and videos, and engage in group discussions and demonstrations of commonly used medical interventions when dealing with crash victims.

And if patient confidentiality can be protected, participants watch what goes on in a hospital trauma room after a car crash.

Participants also spend four hours at the morgue, tour the coroner’s office and watch autopsies — usually car crash victims, Legaspi said.

69F,“I have never felt so sick in my life,” said one offender who went through the program.

The program also saves communities about $4,500 per participant by decreasing the number of repeat drunk driving offenses, Legaspi said, adding that the nonprofit Corrective Behavior Institute’s study showed only between 1 and 6 percent of youths who went through the program were arrested again for DUI. In Los Angeles County, about 30 percent of offenders are arrested again for DUIs, Legaspi said. “Clearly it’s an effective program.”

Judges also send those convicted of reckless driving, racing, speeding or vehicular manslaughter to the program, Legaspi said.

“The oldest person I’ve seen was in his 80s,” he said

Hospitals use the program to reach out to communities and nonprofits use the program to fulfill community benefit requirements set by the state.

However, morgues have more accommodation difficulties, Legaspi said.

The Los Angeles County morgue can only accommodate 2,500 participants each year. “It’s a business, not just an educational opportunity,” Legaspi said.

Court-referred participants also write a 500-word essay about the experience.

As one person wrote, the experience “encouraged me to no longer drink and drive. I enjoy my life very much, and I will do anything I can to preserve the life of myself and others.”

Legaspi said that’s the point of the program.

“You become used to the blood and guts,” but not breaking the news to victims’ families, especially when it comes to a preventable collision like drunk driving, Legaspi said.

“I actually looked a mother in the eyes and told her (that) her daughter died quickly and painlessly when I knew she didn’t,” Legaspi said.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 3, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/110303.pdf?ref=smdp.com)