Hiland High School seniors create mesmerizing mock crash scene
One bad choice can lead to Gary Chanay, Holmes County sheriff's deputy, responding to an accident and then knocking on the door of a young person's home to tell their parents that they won't be coming home — ever.
That forlorn image of death and destruction is one which a group of Hiland High School seniors hoped to portray during the mock crash, which took place on Monday, April 12, at Hiland.
"The goal here is to give you all pause as to how dangerous it is to operate a vehicle while not paying full attention," said Matt Johnson, Hiland principal. "We need to take time to think about the consequences every time we get behind the wheel. If you text while you're driving and cause an accident, the lives you change will be your responsibility."
A show of hands proved the point as to how many teens had sent texts while driving. It has become an alarmingly popular thing to do, and while many states have laws against it, Ohio has yet to follow suit.
"Look at this mess," said senior Drew Stutzman. "How do you explain the pain and suffering and death to someone's parents? I know I've seen people texting and driving, and the consequences can be terrible. How do you tell someone that their child is never coming home again?"
For this group of seniors, while the evening of dreams approaches with the prom arriving this weekend, a higher calling to civic duty comes before having a good time.
More than one dozen Hiland seniors decided to take the initiative to contact area law enforcement and East Holmes and Paint Township fire and EMS and set up a mock crash event for the entire school population.
With two automobiles crushed together following a faux head-on collision on the main driveway leading up to the school, the students painted a horrifying picture of what could be should a driver get behind the wheel and make a poor decision.
Only this poor decision had nothing to do with alcohol. This time, the crash was caused by a teen texting while driving, something which occurs more and more among both teens and adults.
While Emily Schlabach, Eric Schlabach and Audra Beechy drew up the game plan and wrote the script for the event, which took place just days before the prom, fellow senior Drew Stutzman took care of creating a video of the mock crash story, including a fiercely realistic 9-1-1 call to an operator describing what had happened.
"The video was really a last-second addition, but it only took a couple of hours to put it together," said Stutzman, who gets plenty of practice working for his parent's video company, 3M Video. "We used a green screen and inserted what we needed."
The result was a very life-like rendition of what could really happen, and it was viewed by the entire student body right before they were asked to go outside to where the people seen in the crash on the video were seen in real life, scattered around the two cars that collided.
Rick Beechy, Audra's father, who serves as the assistant fire chief for Paint Township, said that the entire operation was the idea of the seniors, including locating the two automobiles, and that neither fire department nor the Holmes County sheriff's office, all of which responded to the fake accident, had to do much in the way of preparing.
"This was all the idea of the kids," said Beechy. "It was something that they wanted to do. We had very little input into the entire thing."
One main difference in this year's event as compared to previous years, is that instead of drinking and driving being the main culprit behind the death and destruction, it was a new antagonist behind the wheel: texting.
Audra Beechy said that addition was Stutzman's idea, but once they heard it, they quickly implemented it into the theme.
"We thought it was a fantastic idea, since we don't have that many drinking accidents as compared to simple distractions behind the wheel of a car," said Beechy. "We felt it was very appropriate for today's teens."
Beechy, whose own real-life accident spurred her to pen the story, said that most of the writing, planning and plotting for the event was done at school, or at Java Jo's in Berlin. She said that while they hope that the message of paying attention and not texting or talking on the phone while driving sunk in to the students watching, at least one group got the message: the seniors participating in the mock crash.
"I think it made a huge impact on us, because we had to prepare it, and get in position, get all bloody and play the roles," said Beechy. "It was very real, and very nasty, and it really sunk in for all of us."
"We hope that all of you take this message to heart and think seriously about the consequences of texting while driving," Johnson urged all of the students. "It only takes a split second to change lives forever."
Published: April 18, 2010
