Mock accidents teach teens much
POSTED: May 10, 2008
The smashed car is surrounded by emergency personnel. A girlás body is hanging out the partially open door, her bloodied arm hanging limp from her body. The driver has been thrown through the windshield and is on the ground in front of the car. He is not moving.
As the victims are taken away, their parents are crying and holding each other. And their entire class stands on the school lawn, watching this scene play out.
It is a scene repeated at high schools all around the area in the spring as proms are held and graduation time draws near.
Mock traffic accidents mix the almost surreal scene of teenagers watching as their friends are hurt, maimed or killed.
Mock accidents are very real as a teaching tool.
In decades past, young drivers werenát made to think much about the consequences of traffic accidents until after they had one. Then, aside from the wrath of their father or mother, they often had to sit through awful movies showing people maimed in violent collisions.
Think of the mock accident as a way to replace the often ignored movies with something a little more realistic, something that hits a little closer to home.
With the cooperation of local law enforcement and emergency services personnel, the mock wreck involves players from the school where the accident is staged.
And no movie can match the emotions of a teenager, living at the height of that feeling of invincibility that occurs between obtaining a driverás license and high school graduation, seeing a friend hurt in a wreck.
Thankfully, when it comes to the mock accident, the hurt is only stage makeup. The wrecked car is a prop. And, if the memory it creates is real, then the mock wreck has done its job of preventing the hurt from being real.
We salute area law enforcement and the high school organizations that have become involved in the annual mock accident program.
If one young driver slows down or avoids the temptation to drink (which is illegal for anyone under age 21), then lives are saved, and the graphic presentation on the high school lawn has achieved its objective.
