Emergency Contact Information!

On December 7, 2005, the life of Christine Olson was changed forever. Christine's daughter Tiffiany Olson was involved in a traffic crash on U.S. 19 in Manatee County, Florida. Tiffiany received fatal injuries when the motorcycle she was a passenger on collided with another vehicle.

Ms. Olson was not notified of Tiffiany’s passing for several hours and was not able to say her last goodbyes. Ms. Olson was heartbroken. She then found the silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud. Ms. Olson, with the assistance of State Representative Bill Galvano from Bradenton District 68, began pushing for emergency information to be added to a person's driver's license or identification card.

Since the information could not be printed directly on a license, Ms. Olson and Rep. Galvano contacted the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) and took the next best route-to have the information included in the D.A.V.I.D. (Driver And Vehicle Information Database) system which is a secured database used by most law enforcement agencies in the State of Florida.

Ms. Olson and her family and DHSMV are urging all licensed drivers in the State of Florida to input their information so families can be contacted more quickly when a family member is seriously injured or killed in a traffic crash.

Ms. Olson and her family have struggled to make emergency information readily available for law enforcement and her efforts have paid off so far. There have been thousands of hits to the website in the short period of time it has been active. To inform families first - Our mission is to improve notification of loved ones by law enforcement. When tragedy strikes . . . family and loved ones need to know.

What a great idea! I encourage everyone with a Florida Driver's License to take advantage of this tremendous opportunity - one that I hope you will never have to use. To add your emergency contact information to the Driver And Vehicle Information database, go to https://www8.hsmv.state.fl.us/eci/

I hope other states follow this lead. If anyone knows of other states that do this, please leave a comment so that we can let people know.