By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
FOR the next two years, Cadmiel ‘Tibby’ Duscas is under a court order to drive home a road-safety campaign to school students.
Not that the 24-year-old Noble Park man is complaining.
He realised he was fortunate not to be in jail after nearly killing himself, his younger brother and sister, and two friends in a terrifying drink-and-drug-driving crash on Pound Road, Narre Warren South, early on 20 May 2012.
On Tuesday last week Dandenong Magistrates’ Court judge Greg Connellan imposed a 18-month jail term suspended for two years.
He also placed Duscas on a good-behaviour bond requiring the accused to submit eight-month progress reports on spreading the road safety message to Victorian schools and on social media for the next two years.
In October Mr Connellan stripped away Duscas’s driving licence for four years – double the minimum mandatory sentence – for driving under the influence and negligently causing serious injury to his four passengers.
“I don’t blame him for making an example of me,” Duscas said last week.
He plans to visit his former school, Carawatha Primary School, to share his salutary story and warn children not to travel with substance-affected drivers.
In the meantime, he will maintain his Facebook site Our Second Chance – Almost Fatality to Reality.
Apart from the occasional flashback of crunching metal, Duscas said he is not haunted by the crash.
“I’d like to think I’m a bit less impulsive now, that I think about my actions before I do something.
“The positive thing is I’ve since become a good public speaker, that I’ve got this experience to share to other people.”
His lawyer Michael Kuzilny told the Journal that a jail term wasn’t always a good thing for young people.
“They often come out worse.
“You have to remember sometimes young people make mistakes.
“I think it was a good outcome.”
