Students at Sachem High School East experienced what it’s like to drive under the influence during an event hosted by the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office campus Thursday. About 1,000 students from East, during their health, gym or lunch periods, attended the event, which included a tour of the Breath Alcohol Testing Mobile Unit, otherwise known as the Bat Mobile.
The Town of Brookhaven also had an activity where students could “text and drive” in their “Safety Town” cars as a simulation. The highlight of the day was when State Farm and the National Youth Leadership Council presented a $2,000 check to Sachem East’s SADD club as part of the “Project Ignition” grant.
Sachem East was one of 26 schools in the nation to receive this grant to support their teen driver safety campaigns and compete to be named as one of 10 “Project Ignition National Leader Schools”. These 10 best campaigns of the 26 will have the opportunity to receive additional funding to support their participation in a national conference or event and go deeper with their campaigns during the 2012-2013 school year.
Sequoya Middle School students created posters to decorate hallways at East for the event and the Sachem Cosmetology program raffled off five haircuts from Sachem’s cosmetology students.
This entire program was brought to Sachem East through the efforts of Rachel Lugo and Angela Brockman of EAC; Education & Assistance Corporation, grants from State Farm through YSA (Youth Serve America, YOUth in the Driver’s Seat/Semester of Service) and NYLC (National Youth Leadership Council/Project Ignition) and Sachem East SADD, led by Patricia Broderick and Marissa Boscia.
Driving facts you may not have known …
- Five seconds is the average time your eyes are off the road while texting. When traveling at 55mph, that’s enough time to cover the length of a football field. (2009, VTTI)
- A texting driver is 23 times more likely to get into a crash than a non-texting driver. (2009, VTTI)
- Of those killed in distracted-driving-related crashes, 995 involved reports of a cell phone as a distraction (18% of fatalities in distraction-related crashes). (2009, NHTSA)
- Using a cell phone while driving, whether it’s handheld or hands-free, delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent. (2009, University of Utah)
- 20 percent of injury crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving. (2009, NHTSA)
(Official release of Sachem Central School District)