by High School everyone i knew was drinking. maybe they were not (yet) getting drunk, but they drank. and if your driving is already shaky, ANYTHINg can make the safe/not safe difference.
i, personally think that the problem is that showing them crashes tends to make people go al macho "i can watch grislier horror movies than you" what i think hits home is those tests where they delay the controls on the video game and etc to simulate drunken reactions,, combined with video and live testimony of the AFTERTMATH of the drunk driving crashes
kids in wheelchairs, kids telling about how their girlfriend died next to them and they had to deal with her parents.
crash videos? and wreck/body videos? we all watched them. they are just more "movies" to most kids.
besides, kids are not scared of dying. they are scared of being disabled
for one, the people who make it up to the ICU are the ones who AREN'T dead. they're getting trached, and possibly never walking again.
for two, it doesn't have to involve *watching* crashes. they can jsut get up there and talk about it. hearing the testimony of a peron who's been in a crash can leave you feeling sorry for THAT person. hearing from the hospital workers that THIS IS SUPER COMMON AND IT'S PEOPLE OF ALL AGES AND THEY ALL THOUGHT THEY WERE IMMUNE TO IT might hit home a bit diferently. it's not a specific face to the victims. it's general. it's, hypothetically, you.
Until it becomes completely socially unacceptable to drink and drive, nothing you can say or show the kids will "scare them straight". As far as demotivators go, fear is actually pretty weak because most people - there are plenty of adults that drink and drive too - still believe that the accidents are what happen to other people. They continue to drink and drive because 1) they're unbelievably selfish, and could care less about the safety of others on the road, and 2)they honestly don't believe that anything bad will happen to them because unfortunately, most of them probably know, or at least know of people that have been drinking and driving their entire lives without being in a major accident. These videos tend to have a scorn inducing effect i.e. they'll just laugh and say that the person that caused the accident obviously couldn't handle their alcohol. It's sad, but remember you're dealing with the mentality of a person that would actually pick up the keys and drive in the first place. It's a totally different head space
( ... )
I never wrote my post on smoking, but it was going to be something like this: how on earth do people still think it's cool? seriously. when I was a kid all our anti-smoking talks in school were basically: your parents smike because they thought it was cool but now they're addicted and want to quit and YOU know better, you won't start becaue you know it's not cool and you're jsut going to want to quit when you're older anyway!
it totally worked on me, to the point where I assumed everyone in my generation would come to the same conclusion I did. I was *completely surprised* to find kids my age smoking by high school, and even a couple of my cousins.
haha yeah. I know some people don't think it's a big deal but smoking would have been a dealbreaker for me. no way, ever. thankfully chris is not only a nonsmoker but feels the same way about it as I do :)
for some reason I keep having dreams where he takes it up, and I'm so pissed at him, and he thinks it's no big deal. it makes no sense. :P
Where my mom comes from there's no age limit for alcohol consumption. She grew up having a beer with dinner from the time she was like 5. So it was totally uncool and normal and everybody drinks a little there. You don't have 14 year olds getting their stomachs pumped out and hooked up to life support because they drank themselves silly.
the probelm isn't all underaged or even college aged drivers--I jsut say give the talk in high school or college because when else you gonna get a whole crowd of people to sit and listen? chris had a patient who was a mother in her 30's... her husband was the one driving.
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i, personally think that the problem is that showing them crashes tends to make people go al macho "i can watch grislier horror movies than you"
what i think hits home is those tests where they delay the controls on the video game and etc to simulate drunken reactions,, combined with video and live testimony of the AFTERTMATH of the drunk driving crashes
kids in wheelchairs, kids telling about how their girlfriend died next to them and they had to deal with her parents.
crash videos? and wreck/body videos? we all watched them. they are just more "movies" to most kids.
besides, kids are not scared of dying. they are scared of being disabled
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for two, it doesn't have to involve *watching* crashes. they can jsut get up there and talk about it. hearing the testimony of a peron who's been in a crash can leave you feeling sorry for THAT person. hearing from the hospital workers that THIS IS SUPER COMMON AND IT'S PEOPLE OF ALL AGES AND THEY ALL THOUGHT THEY WERE IMMUNE TO IT might hit home a bit diferently. it's not a specific face to the victims. it's general. it's, hypothetically, you.
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it totally worked on me, to the point where I assumed everyone in my generation would come to the same conclusion I did. I was *completely surprised* to find kids my age smoking by high school, and even a couple of my cousins.
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for some reason I keep having dreams where he takes it up, and I'm so pissed at him, and he thinks it's no big deal. it makes no sense. :P
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