Cleaves warns teens about distracted driving dangers
Fletcher Cleaves and his roommate decided to stop at Buffalo Wild Wings and pick up some chicken before watching the Titans game that frightening September night nearly a decade ago. Both freshman football players at Lambuth University, they had just finished practice, running plays with the starters for the first time.
They hopped in Cleaves’ 1999 purple Honda Accord to grab dinner.
Just 18 years old and focused on the upcoming college football season, they never anticipated the crash to come or the consequences a distracted driver would leave on their lives.
After wolfing down a few wings in the restaurant parking lot, Cleaves climbed back behind the wheel and headed toward campus. As they drove, the friends talked about football and girls. Then his buddy, Dayne Mullins, paused. “Yo, Fletch,” he said. As Cleaves focused his eyes on the road, he saw a car coming toward them veer across the center line. Cleaves clearly recalls the woman driving looking down at something in her hand.
“You could see the glow of the phone on her face,” Cleaves, a Cordova native, says.
Tasting leaves and mud, he realized the worst
The cars neared collision, and Cleaves panicked. He overcorrect-
ed, turning the wheel too hard. Then the world started spinning, and Cleaves lost control.
His car crashed into a guardrail. It flipped into a concrete embankment. It twisted and tumbled, landing upside down with the roof caved in.
Cleaves and Mullins — neither wearing a seat belt — were left unconscious. The other driver never stopped. When Cleaves came to – maybe after a few seconds or maybe a few minutes, he doesn’t know for sure – he heard his friend calling his name.
It was dark outside. Just after 8:20 p.m.
“I thought we were in (the) dorm,” Cleaves says, remembering the night nine years ago. “In my mind, I thought we had to be up for a team meeting.”
Then he tasted mud and leaves in his mouth and realized he was in his car.
The worse realization was still to come.
Focus on the road — for others around you
Cleaves, who lives in Memphis, tells the story now with acceptance and a forward-focused mission.
He has appeared on ESPN’s “College GameDay” and “SportsCenter” among other shows and on ESPN radio. He also was featured in a short film as part of the AT&T “ItCanWait” campaign.
This week, he will talk to more than 200 Tennessee teens about the dangers of distracted driving, navigating his wheelchair in front of the group attending the first Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security Teen Driver Education Camp.
The free, five-day experience will include virtual reality texting and crash simulation, talks led by emergency room surgeons and devastating stories from Tennesseans like Cleaves.
It’s being hosted by Tennessee Highway Patrol to bring teens across the state face-to-face with the very real dangers of distracted driving.
Distracted driving claimed 3,450 lives in 2016 alone.
“I tell people all the time, you want to be focused on the road not only for yourself but for others around you,” Cleaves says. “As a driver, you are responsible for other people’s lives.”
‘I broke my neck’
As emergency personnel swarmed the scene, a disoriented Mullins kept asking the same questions over and over again.
What happened? Can I have something to drink? Where’s Fletcher?
In the back of the ambulance, the paramedic assessed Cleaves’ injuries.
“I want you to move your right leg,” she said.
She waited a couple seconds, then asked again. “Move your right leg,” she repeated. “I did,” Cleaves responded. But he had not. He couldn’t. Cleaves called his dad from the paramedic’s cellphone as they sped toward the hospital.
“They said I broke my neck,” he told his father. “Are you sure?” “Yeah,” was all Cleaves could say.
At the hospital, he had emergency surgery to fuse his C5 and C6 vertebrae in his spinal cord. Hours later, the doctors listed all the things Cleaves no longer would be able to do. He would never play football. He would never walk again.
You have your whole life in front of you, then boom, something tragic
Cleaves spent only 10 days in the hospital, a feat many marveled at afterward. He had been in such prime physical condition for football his body healed quicker than most. But so much was different. His football scholarship wiped away.
His body paralyzed from the chest down.
One glance down by a distracted driver changed Cleaves’ life forever.
After 12 weeks in an intensive rehab program at Shepherd Center in Atlanta, he moved into an on-site apartment with his dad and learned to live again.
“You are 18 or 19, just graduated high school with the whole world in front of you, and then boom something tragic like this happens,” Cleaves says.
“I was so used to relying on physical strength. When that’s taken away from you, it’s hard to cope with at first. But I was like: ‘Give me my goals. What’s next? What’s next? What’s next?’ ”
Cleaves had to relearn how to dress himself, feed himself, raise his hand without it falling. He also had to learn how to rely on others to do things he used to do himself with ease, even take notes in class when he finally returned to college.
Six years after his accident, he graduated from the University of Memphis and moved out on his own.
He works in the IT department for AutoZone. He drives a white GMC Sierra now, using hand controls to break, accelerate and steer.
Everything he has been told he would never do again, the 27-year-old continues to work to prove otherwise. It’s the athlete in him, still striving.
“I had to swallow the bullet,” he says. “Be optimistic. Figure out how to deal with life the best I can today.”
What motivates him most is sharing his story.
One selfie, one text or one email and so much can be taken away.
Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 or jbliss@tennessean.com and on Twitter @jlbliss.