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For some, the consequences of a distracted driving accident have only been seen in the movies. But for others, they are all too real.
Students at Creston Community High School recently decided to create a video depicting a distracted driving incident, from the point of leaving school to the trial in court a year later.
“We’re doing this to raise awareness of distracted driving so people realize one little mistake can impact several different families,” said Chase Shiltz, project member.
High school administrators and staff have worked on this project for about a year and a half with Greater Regional Medical Center staff. The video, created by students in the environmental and spacial technology (EAST) group and media technology class, is a 30-minute representation of the effects of distracted or drunk driving.
“Those are the two main problems with kids our age, or pretty close,” said Gavin Woods, project member.
Distracted driving
“Texting and driving is happening a whole lot more, and that is what this was geared toward, more or less,” said Jen Worisek, Greater Regional Medical Center paramedic. “The school was working on a project already. ... In order to make the video and all that stuff, we had to add the alcohol awareness in there. But, it was more geared toward distracted driving.”
Worisek said it was good working with the group of students and teachers involved in the project at the high school. She and the group worked well together “to make this the best it could be.”
“Basically, it’s important so students understand the consequences of their actions and what happens when they make a bad decision,” said Creston Police Chief Paul Ver Meer.
Creston Police Officer Jayrd Merritt was the arresting officer in the video. He said the student who was arrested realized he did not like being handcuffed and put in the back of a police vehicle.
“I think they (students) need to know that things happen very easily, and I think that the consequences for small actions can be grave,” Merritt said. “They need to understand that when they’re in a car, they’re driving a 2,000-pound bullet, essentially, and when you add distracted driving, texting and drinking, your life and everyone’s around you is in danger.”
Video
In the video, students leave school at lunchtime. A distracted driving accident occurs and the students are taken to the emergency room, where paramedics and a doctor go through their protocol and several students mock-die. At the same time, one student is charged and booked into jail. There is also a news broadcast and a one-year-later scene, when a student is going through a trial.
“We kind of split it up between several big scenes and we did one scene at a time. Then we just kind of put it all together,” said Dalton O’Riley, project member.
Before filming, the students watched videos made by students in other school districts, as well as movies involving vehicle accidents, in order to make it realistic. They also took information from the Every 15 Minutes project, an old project where students were removed from class one at a time every 15 minutes, depicting the effects of someone dying by a drunk driver.
The students then worked on the video for more than two months. The first scenes they wrote and acted out were ones that allowed for more time and retakes, such as the scene involving being booked into jail. The other scenes, such as in the ER, were acted out once, with students filming from various angles.
“It actually worked out really well. I mean, it flowed really nice. We didn’t have to do retakes and stuff like that. Our staff here at the hospital came in and did their job like they would if this was a real-life scenario,” Worisek said.
The students used different media in the media technology class, such as a green screen for a news broadcast, various video recorders and cameras and Final Cut Pro, a video-editing software.
“They (first responders) really did an amazing job with everything, especially the ER scene. They went all out on that. They hooked up all IVs, did neck braces, did breathing tubes. They did everything. So, just being in that room, seeing them go full on, it felt real filming in there,” O’Riley said.
“It was really humbling because in the video, me and Hank (Looney), we die because of it, but just how fast everything happened. We were like laying in our poses or whatever, and you hear sirens and all of a sudden there’s paramedics and police and firefighters and just all the first responders, and they go through and it feels like you are in it. It just opened my eyes, and it puts it in perspective how harmful distracted driving is.” Woods said.
According to the Iowa Department of Transportation, in 2001, there was one fatality, 357 injuries and 518 total crashes caused by drivers distracted by cell phones or other devices.
Those numbers have steadily increased, and in 2015 there were 11 fatalities, 601 injuries and 1,100 total crashes.
Gov. Terry Branstad and lawmakers have expressed alarm about a rising number of deaths on Iowa roadways caused by intoxicated and distracted drivers. Branstad last week signed laws allowing officers to pull over drivers for texting while driving, increasing the penalties for texting-related vehicular homicides, and creating a statewide sobriety and drug monitoring program for intoxicated drivers.
Worisek, who worked one-on-one with Creston Community High School administration, hopes to expand the program to other school districts, such as those in Afton and Mount Ayr.
“I want to see positive impact from this,” Worisek said. “I want to see that they realize that this is a problem and something like this could happen, and kind of realize, you know, they don’t want to be put in a situation like that where they’re the cause of an accident that hurts people.”