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March 20, 2009

Tough consequences

SADD program raises driving safety awareness

Jonathan Jackson

Each day across the nation, 18 students lose their lives in traffic accidents, according to Baldwin High School teacher and SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) adviser Crawford Finley. The Baldwin High School chapter of SADD hopes to raise awareness to help change that statistic.

“With 18 students dying every day, it would only take 80 days to completely empty Baldwin High School,” Finley said.

SADD decided to take the message of driving safety to students and is sponsoring a two-day reality check to help students understand the importance of being safe behind the wheel.

SADD received a grant from Ga. Gov. Sonny Perdue’s Office of Highway Safety to enforce the importance of making good decisions when it comes to operating an automobile. The $2,000 grant has allowed the organization to focus on safety through a program that puts students face-to-face with poor choices that may result in death.

“A lot of people think that it can’t happen to them,” SADD member Kierra Spikes said. “It can happen to anyone.”

During the lunch periods from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Baldwin High, students have the opportunity to view videos showing how poor choices can result in horrific traffic crashes. The graphic videos are accompanied by materials provided at an information table where students can receive printed resources on automobile safety and the Georgia State Patrol’s Click-It-Or-Ticket program. The students approach a coffin to see possible results of poor driving choices. Instead of finding a body inside the casket, students are looking at their own reflections in a mirror.

“We’re doing this as a reality check,” Spikes said. “We’re doing this to show teens, this can happen to you.”

Finley said in addition to the most recent SADD interactive display, that the organization, teaming with the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Department, spends time with its own Click-It-Or-Ticket program in the school parking lot.

“We tell the students for about a week that the event is coming up,” Finley said. “Then we go into the parking lot and advise students not wearing their seat belts to put them on. After they pass us, the deputy is waiting.”

Finley said the donation of the casket by Williams Funeral Home was a big help and will enable the group to continue spreading their message of good decision-making by stretching the grant dollars farther.

SADD is student led and Finley said the students tend to self-regulate in that environment.

“The SADD students develop policy for the club,” Finley said. “They elect their own officers and they deal with discipline issues within the club themselves. Some of them formerly had discipline problems, but since joining SADD, those have gone away — but their GPAs have gone up.”

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