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.
Mrs. Olson was not notified of Tiffiany’s passing for several hours and was not able to say her last goodbyes. Mrs. Olson was heartbroken. She then found the silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud. Mrs. 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. Since the information could not be printed directly on a license, Mrs. 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.
Mrs. 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. Mrs. 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. Work is underway to established emergency contact systems in every state.
The Olson family has created a website www.toinformfamiliesfirst.org in Tiffiany’s memory to help further this very important cause.