Working to reduce destructive driving

Home

Osceola News

Osceola County

Other Sun Publications

FREE DELIVERY!
Get Free Delivery! Request your Osceola News Gazette Today.

Login Form

2013 Osceola Health

2013 Sexual Predator Sexual Offender List sexualpredatorcover13

Windows on the Classroom March 2013

School Calendar
2012-2013

View our other Special Sections

Working to reduce destructive driving

County News

Thursday, 27 December 2012 08:00

News-Gazette Photo/Andrew Sullivan
Nova Peña, a senior at St. Cloud High School, miscalculates during a run through an obstacle course while wearing Fatal Vision goggles during a Dec. 5 distracted driving activity put on by the St. Cloud and Kissimmee police departments. The goggles give the wearer a disorienting view that mimics the effects of driving while intoxicated.

By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer
When students in St. Cloud High School’s Bulldogs Against Destructive Driving conducted an experiment to calculate how many of their peers actually wore their seatbelts, they expected disastrous results.
On Dec. 3, the club members took a tally of their fellow students driving onto campus to check if they were buckled up and found that 78 percent were wearing their seatbelts.

“We were surprised that it was pretty good but we’d like it to be 100 percent,” BADD teacher advisor Denise Peeler said.
The high number didn’t deter the club’s weeklong focus on destructive driving supported by all three local law enforcement agencies.
The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office donated the club’s T-shirts and State Farm Insurance contributed $2,500 toward the club’s efforts.

The week included the Kissimmee Police Department’s anti-texting while driving Public Service Announcement, which was filmed earlier this year at Osceola High School using local emergency service personnel.
“It really makes the students think about what they’re doing,” Peeler said. “They had some really powerful video.”
The traffic safety week also was the debut of the Kissimmee Police Department’s new texting simulator.
St. Cloud High School students were the first public citizens to test out the $9,000 simulator, a nearly five-minute simulation on the standalone, completely portable system that includes realistic foot pedals, a steering wheel and the monitor. The program also allows users to choose between day or night simulation.
Students used their own cell phones during the demonstration, on which text messages appeared from the program while a “passenger” gives the driver directions. The program will continue to send text messages if the user attempts to ignore them.
The program measures how many times the driver crosses over traffic lines, crashes or hits pedestrians. It can also be used to simulate impaired driving.
Stacie Miller, the police department’s public information officer, has made educating young drivers about the dangers of texting while driving her pet project, working with the city for more than a year to acquire the simulator.
“Teen driving fatalities have increased 7 percent in the past year and the increase is attributed to distracted driving,” Miller said. “Kissimmee Police Department’s presentation about the dangers of texting while driving shows the brutal truth about this epidemic and having the students experience the simulator will hopefully drive home the fact that texting while driving can be deadly choice. “
Students also received “Texting Kills” bands to wear and participated in activities with the St. Cloud Police Department, which included wearing “Fatal Vision” goggles that allow the user to see through the eyes of a drunk person.
Those wearing the goggles attempted to walk a straight line, catch a football and drive a pedal car through a small obstacle course, oftentimes while texting on their cell phone.
Students often made comments such as “I’m dizzy” after wearing the goggles.
Senior Ciara Miller, no relation to Stacie Miller, was happy with the turnout of her peers to the activities the club organized. As the vice president of projects for BADD, she and her fellow club members designed traffic safety week so their peers would “be aware of their consequences of destructive driving.”
Texting while driving was the biggest topic the club wanted to conquer after the school has seen an uptick in the last two years of on-campus accidents attributed to cell phone usage, Ciara Miller said.
Senior Elizabeth Wereka, vice president of programs of work for BADD, was encouraged by the feedback she heard from her classmates.
“I’ve heard people talking, saying ‘I’m never going to text and drive,’” she said. “I think it’s having an impact on them.”