(upbeat music)
My son Philip's, just a great young man.
And you normally didn't have to tell Philip to be smart
and make right decisions.
He just did that.
(upbeat music)
- [Commentator] Burns keeps it, he's gonna throw, wide open.
Lutzenkirchen, touchdown, Auburn!
(somber music)
- What gets me out of bed each and every day
is the memory of my son.
The work we have to do through this foundation,
to honor Philip, to continue to see
that he makes a difference in this world,
even though he's physically not here.
(crowd cheering)
June 27, 2014, he was asked to go to a farm.
And I think what he was told was,
Philip, bring what you want to eat, drink,
it's very remote, we're not going anywhere
once we get there and unfortunately,
due to what appeared to be a lot of drinking the kids did,
getting into a vehicle at 2:30 in the morning,
Philip found himself in the backseat behind the driver
with two other friends and there were four kids in this SUV,
they were speeding
three of the four weren't wearing seat belts.
And ultimately, in this rural area, they missed a stop sign.
And that led to a single vehicle crash
that took Philips life and the drivers life.
(somber music)
So the Lutzie 43 Foundation,
everything we do is around Philips number 43.
At Auburn, a lot of Auburn fans just refer to him as Lutzie.
Shortly after he passed away,
we made a commitment to use the platform
that he had created as a student athlete
at Auburn University.
I tell people all the time,
if he was just a football player,
we wouldn't have his foundation.
But because of who he was as a person,
how he treated people, everything just came together.
So we've got to do something with this,
with his story, with his life,
to try to make an impact on others,
so that other families don't find themselves
having lost a child to distracted or impaired driving
or poor driving decisions.
(somber music)
We nationally do not have a symbol
that if you were to look at it,
or anybody whether you're in Portland, Oregon,
or Portland, Maine, and you saw that symbol,
it would trigger you to say,
"I'm not gonna be a distracted or an impaired driver."
(somber music)
So we took it upon ourselves to say,
"I wonder if I take something
that came about my great relationship
with the Children's Hospital of Alabama,
Alabama Department of Transportation, public safety,
and so forth and State Farm."
We've been doing a teen driving summit
in the state of Alabama in the fall called
"your keys to drive."
And when kids would come to this free event,
about a five hour event
where they go through a series of safe driving modules.
And I get to give a keynote address,
they get a program on the front is a key.
And that slogan inside of it "your keys to drive"
and somebody a lot smarter than me said Mike,
there's it that's the ticket right there,
take a key and put 43 key seconds on it.
But we created a countdown that says
before you start any vehicle regardless of your age,
regardless of what you're driving,
take 43 key seconds to say
"Do I have a clear head, clear hands, clear eyes".
And then we do tie in
the National 20 year program of click it
or ticket saying "click it".
And what a clear head means is that,
I'm gonna sit there before I start this car
to say to myself, "I'm not drug impaired, alcohol impaired,
I'm not emotionally impaired, I'm not fatigued.
And I'm not technology impaired with a phone in my hand."
I'm not playing on my dashboard.
I've already set my dashboard, whether it's to set a GPS,
to set a radio, whatever you wanna do that way.
And then you move forward from clear head to clear eyes.
Are my eyes ready to be focused on the road.
Not on my phone, not these teenagers
that think they can do Facebook Live.
Not adults who think they can text
and drive because of their experience of driving.
The reality of it is our kids regardless of how young
or old, they watch what we do as parents.
So my encouragement to the parents are,
be a leader, be an example.
Stop texting and driving, stop holding that phone.
I never thought I'd be the person
that would be getting interviewed about a nonprofit.
A nonprofit focused on honoring a young man,
a nonprofit focused on changing the narrative
of the number of crashes and injuries and fatalities
that are occurring behind the wheel of vehicles.
I'm motivated to have our 43 symbol for that key
and that number to become just instantaneous
in someone's mind that that's my trigger
to put my phone down, to wear my seatbelt.
For younger people to have the courage
to tell their friends to put their seat belts on.
But I hope what it will do will give us all courage
to do the right thing behind the wheel of a vehicle
without going through what my family's gone through.
In the loss of a child who we motivated to do this.
That's my motivation.
That's the purpose of this foundation.
And that's what I will continue to do.
(somber music)