“Look ahead” is a simple message with multiple meanings, as Plymouth-Canton Educational Park students found out this week through a contest engineered by the Park’s Students Against Destructive Decisions chapter.
Competing in the annual Strive for a Safer Drive contest sponsored by the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning, P-CEP students got a look at what the various impacts of distracted driving can be.
It’s the fourth year P-CEP students have participated in the contest. They’ve finished first twice and third once in their three years.
“They want to get kids to ‘look ahead’ at all the dangers out there on the road,” SADD faculty adviser Janet Sutherland said. “I think we make kids aware how dangerous driving can be and that they have a responsibility to be safe drivers.”
Strive For A Safer Drive is a teen driving initiative aimed at reducing serious traffic crashes, injuries and fatalities among Michigan's most inexperienced drivers – teens. It is presented by AAA Michigan, Ford Driving Skills for Life and Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning.
Competing schools are asked to put together a school-wide plan and the S4SD committee judges the plans. Schools with approved plans are awarded a $2,000 budget. The P-CEP SADD students submitted their plan back in October.
P-CEP’s plan, devised and enacted entirely by SADD members – including the making of posters and videos, along with passing out stickers to students – all warning about distracted driving.
According to statistics, the project noted, some 25 percent of teenagers text and drive, while 10 percent of people who die in car accidents were somehow distracted.
“‘Look ahead’ has a number of meanings to high school drivers. It has the literal meaning and it has the figurative meaning of look ahead at how an accident could change the rest of your life,” Sutherland said.
Aside from teaching the dangers of distracted driving, students involved in the project learned a variety of life skills. They were responsible for designing the posters and stickers, they wrote, directed and filmed the videos and they conducted the tests.
One of the tests they used was catching a ruler. A student was asked to catch a falling ruler while focused solely on the ruler and then try it again while texting. The difference in reaction time was stark.
Canton Police Officer Andrew Curry, the department’s school resource officer at The Park, also brought in “drunk goggles,” specialized goggles designed to make kids’ reactions to seemingly simple tasks more as they would be had they been drinking.
“The SADD kids learns about organizing, scheduling, making sure they have the money and following up with a report,” Sutherland said.
The winning teams get to have a contingent attend professional driving lessons at the Ford Proving Grounds.
This year’s program has to be submitted later this month. Winners will be announced in April.