Silent but sobering
Playing ‘dead’ to get message across
Students at Te Awamutu College this month highlighted important road safety messages as part of a SADD — Students Against Dangerous Driving — campaign to help young people and the community stay safe.
Dressed in black with masking tape over their mouths, students played ‘dead’ on Friday to get the message across about dangerous driving for the campaign Remember September.
Throughout the day 26 students were taken out of class by another student dressed as the Grim Reaper.
Each student had a message attached to their t-shirt explaining their ‘cause of death’.
Chairperson of the school’s SADD Committee Chloe Schwass said the activity was a silent but sobering visual reminder of the importance of road safety.
Other activities throughout the week included an obstacle course focusing on distractions, a giant snakes and ladders game, and decorating areas around the school with road safety messages — all designed to highlight important safety messages.
Chloe said the campaign was about promoting SADD’s six principles: sober drivers, safe speeds, no distractions, avoiding risks, driving to the conditions, and building experience.
“Younger drivers have the highest rate of distraction-related fatal and serious injury crashes, and we know that research has found that if you take your eyes off the road for three seconds or longer you are 24 times more likely to crash,” she said.
“We want all vehicles to be distraction free.”
SADD national manager Donna Govorko is heartened by the enthusiasm that the students have shown in coordinating their Remember September road safety activities.
“These students have shown incredible initiative in putting together such a comprehensive programme for the community,” she said.
“Because SADD is a peer-topeer education programme, it’s massively important that the safer driving messages give that youth perspective.
“As a charitable trust SADD is still going strong more than 30 years after it launched in New Zealand, and we’re really proud to be in 75 per cent of secondary schools reaching more than 220,000 young people.”