Southwest Colorado has more than twice the rate of traffic fatalities as the state average – attributed to inexperienced drivers, passengers not wearing seat belts and speeding. A new Teen Challenge through the Drive Safe Coalition is working to lower those numbers.
Bayfield High School is the only school that picked up the challenge this year, but several schools are looking at it for next year.
“Not everybody is participating, but we’re trying to make sure everyone gets the same information,” said Jennifer Dvorak, one of the teachers who sponsors the BHS student council, which put on the challenge.”We’ve had a whole four-week program, with one week each on wearing seat belts, impaired driving, distracted driving and graduated driver’s licenses.”
Graduated driver’s licenses include rules for new drivers such as curfews, a limited number of passengers (who must always wear seat belts) and no texting or calling on cellphones.
Adults preaching at students isn’t an effective way to change bad driving behaviors, according to the Southwest Regional Emergency and Trauma Advisory Council, which developed the coalition. So the challenge focuses on peer-to-peer messaging and experiential learning. On Thursday, students attempted a ride through cones while working a math problem on a calculator, and Colorado State Patrol Master Trooper Doug Wiersma visited BHS twice during the impaired-driving awareness week.
“One day, he brought DUI goggles and educated kids while they wore them,” Dvorak said. “Another day, he brought out a car that was in a local crash and gave education on that.”
The program is funded with a grant from the Colorado Department of Transportation. The advisory council performed a pre-challenge study at several schools in the area and will conduct one post-challenge at BHS to see if seat-belt use has increased and fewer students are using cellphones or other distracting behaviors while behind the wheel.
“Next year, we want to do more,” said Ariel Fender, student body president. “We saw how interested kids are when we bring in things like the drunk-driving goggles. A lot said they’d never drive drunk because it’s scary.”
Cade Killough, the sophomore class president, is ready to pick up the challenge for the 2016-2017 school year.
“Instead of just focusing on Bayfield High School, we need to include the whole community,” he said. “We need to go to the middle school and start talking about this, because if we start younger, it will get better more quickly.”
Some students get it.
“Driving is really dangerous,” said Emalee Blakeslee, 16, who’s been driving a little more than a year. “You need to take a lot of care because it’s not just your life but everyone else’s, too.”
For Cade, the message on seat belts resonated, as it did for Reina Echevarri.
“I’m always careful,” she said. “I had a cousin killed by a drunk driver, and she didn’t have her seat belt on.”
Her friend Nikole Smith is part way there.
“I am more conscious now,” she said. “I make sure I always wear it when I’m driving, but not so much when I’m the passenger.”
Rhiannon Harding had a wake-up call of her own.
“I’m distracted especially by food,” she said. “One time, I reached down for a burrito and luckily no one else was on the road because I was suddenly on the other side.”
James Martinez, 16, knows what his distractions are, too, and he wants to avoid them.
“I realized I’m always checking my watch,” he said, “and I usually put my phone in a cup holder, and if it’s vibrating with a text message, I’ll look at it.”
Drivers of any age can’t beat the numbers.
“Every time you look down, it takes 4.5 seconds, 4.5 seconds that could change your life,” said Michiko Burns, grant coordinator for the coalition. “You drive the length of a football field in that time.”
The Centers for Disease Control has shown in its research that the risk of motor vehicle crashes is not only higher for 16- to 19-year-olds than any other age group, it’s almost three times higher than for drivers 20 and older. And that number skews further, with young men aged 16 to 19 almost twice as likely as young women in that age group to have a crash resulting in a death.
Crash risk is also highest in the first months of driving and goes up with teen passengers – increasing with each additional passenger.
“For this age group, a cellphone is an appendage,” said Sheryl Kaufman, dean of students at BHS. “There are some students who don’t listen, but for many, awareness is empowerment to save a life.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
SWRETAC Problem Identified (PDF)
High School Teen Challenge (PDF)
On the net
The Colorado Department of Transportation offers Alive at 25 classes periodically. Visit https://aliveat25.us/co/location-info?id=59 to see when the next one is available.
There’s an app for that
Because teens have been trained to respond immediately to text messages, a vibrating or chiming phone can be a dangerous distraction when they’re driving.
Enter Safer Txt, a free app developed in Durango that notifies the person who sent the message, “I am driving and can’t respond right now. I will get back to you soon.”
While the developers are working with Durango School District 9-R and the Durango Education Foundation to get the word out in town about the app, which is now available for Android operating systems and will soon be available for iPhones, it could be of use to cellphone users of all ages.
Visit http://bit.ly/1Wdyahb to download Safer Txt.
Ann Butler
