What teens learned from a glimpse through the ‘binge-drinking’ goggles
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Version 0 of 1. Tanna Krumm zigzagged around the traffic cones at speeds high enough to make her hair fly, and for a moment it looked as if she would pass the driving test. Then the 16-year-old rounded a turn a little too fast. Suddenly the golf cart was racing down the pavement, beelining for the last orange cone. She smashed into it and slammed on the brakes — a loud screech, then gasps as she climbed out. “I’m still dizzy,” Krumm said, pulling off the goggles she was wearing. “It’s like a kaleidoscope. I really could not see anything.” And that was the point. Dozens of high school students, peer mentors and safe-driving advocates are gathered in the Washington region this week for a multi-day summit aimed at rooting out distracted driving and raising awareness on issues such as drunken, drugged and drowsy driving. This year’s Teen Safe Driving Summit has drawn youth leadership teams from 22 states in an effort to improve teen driving and kicks off National Teen Driver Safety Week, which lasts through Saturday. Sunday’s simulations were underscored by one jarring fact: Car crashes are the No. 1 killer of teens in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2,163 U.S. teens were killed in motor vehicle crashes in 2013, meaning six teens ages 16 to 19 died in crashes every day. While 15- to 24-year-olds represented only 14 percent of the population, they accounted for 30 percent of the costs of motor vehicle injuries among males and 28 percent among females, according to the CDC. The statistics are startling on their own, but teenagers learn best by immersing themselves in the issues directly, said Anita Boles, chief executive of the National Organizations for Youth Safety. And so, on Sunday, they participated in an interactive laboratory involving a series of stations — set up in an Alexandria, Va., parking lot — that simulated unsafe driving situations. “Teenagers really do best when they’re experiencing things,” Boles said. “This gives them an opportunity — rather than us telling them — to actually experience it.” That’s how Krumm, of Meridian, Idaho, ended up behind the wheel of a speeding and then screeching golf cart. Kiara Santel, a 17-year-old senior at Ballou High School in Southeast Washington, said the simulation where Krumm faltered also was her Achilles’ heel. When she put on the “binge-drinking” goggles, the few cones in front of her turned into an impassable mosaic. Which explains why her joyride ended with the golf cart mounting the curb. “It’s crazy,” Santel said. “I saw like 25 cones. If that’s how drunk driving goes, I never want to drunk drive.” Elsewhere in the parking lot, students climbed into an 18-wheeler — with vehicles lining the sides and one parked behind it — to simulate the limited field of vision offered drivers of big rigs. Inexperienced drivers sometimes put themselves in harm’s way by failing to realize that large vehicles handle differently from cars, according to the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance. Nearly 70 percent of crashes involving cars and buses or large trucks are the fault of the car driver, the nonprofit organization says. “You see a lot of buttons,” said Shahid Daniels, a 16-year-old at Ballou, marveling at the array of switches on the dash. “Even though the mirrors are actually huge, you couldn’t see the vehicles at all.” Marissa Kunerth, 19, of Brewster, Minn., who attends North Dakota State University and won the $2,500 National Reid Hollister Scholarship for Promotion of Teen Safe Driving, said texting while driving can be just as dangerous as drugs and alcohol — something she learned when a student in her school district died as a result of a crash involving distracted driving. And it’s not just texting. Rohit Iyer, 17, of Edison, N.J., said he sees fellow students commandeer Spotify playlists and even Snapchat while driving, with the teenage mentality that “they’re invincible.” Madison Le and Emma Gaster, 16-year-olds from Dothan High School in Dothan, Ala., said they want to take what they learn this week and use it to host their own safe driving summit at home. The issue is personal for Gaster, who said that several years ago her grandmother was involved in a bad wreck that sent her to the intensive care unit for two days. The culprit, she said, was the driver of a Hummer who was texting when she struck her grandmother’s Ford Explorer. “No one should have to suffer through a loved one in the hospital because of a decision made by someone else,” Gaster said. |