More than two weeks after an alleged drunk driver struck him and a friend, doctors discharged 12-year-old Angel Reyes to a children’s rehabilitation center yesterday.

Angel and the death of his best friend, VaSean Alleyn, 11, have become symbols of an effort to strengthen the state’s laws on drunken driving.

Before boarding an ambulance outside New York-Presbyterian Weill Medical Center that would take Angel to St. Mary’s rehabilitation center in Bayside, Queens, his mother hugged the doctors and nurses who helped save her son’s life and pull him out of a coma.

“We’ll visit you one day,” Diana Reyes said as she climbed in alongside her son. “But not like this. We’ll make a social visit.”

Sitting upright on a gurney and waving faintly to onlookers, Angel smiled and said he was enjoying the fresh fall air. Two red scars snake across his shaved forehead, where doctors performed surgery to relieve pressure on his brain.

Angel emerged from a coma after nine days, beating the odds of surviving severe brain injury. More than half of traumatic deaths for children come from brain injuries, according to Bruce Greenwald, Angel’s doctor and the director of the pediatric intensive care unit at the hospital on the Upper East Side.

“Angel’s progress has been nothing short of remarkable,” Dr. Greenwald said. “He will be able to function as a healthy, normal child.”

VaSean’s mother, Monique Dixon, and Ms. Reyes hope to meet with Governor Pataki and legislative leaders in coming days to advocate tougher laws for drunk drivers who injure or kill others, Ms. Reyes’s lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein, said.

Under current state law, prosecutors must show evidence of negligence or recklessness, such as speeding or running a red light, to charge vehicular manslaughter.

The driver of the vehicle that struck the two youths is currently charged only with driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor that can bring a jail sentence of up to a year. Police found no evidence that he drove recklessly, though police said he acknowledged having had “a few beers.”

John Wirta, 58, was driving a white van that hit Angel and VaSean on October 22 while they were crossing 73rd Avenue in Hillcrest, Queens. Mr. Wirta was released on $5,000 bail.

Mr. Rubenstein said police were still looking for witnesses.

Angel, whose speech and motor skills are coming back, apparently cannot remember the accident. His mother, who told him about it, said she has not informed him that his best friend died hours after they were hit. That will come later, after Angel settles into the second phase of his recovery at St. Mary’s. It will probably be weeks before he can return to his home in Kew Gardens Hills.

Ms. Reyes has filed a $50 million lawsuit in Queens Supreme Court against Mr. Wirta; his company, Commercial Combustion Service and Installation Corp., and Ford Motor Credit Co., which leased the van to the company.