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Students Give Safe Driving Lesson

Klint Lowry/SUNCOAST NEWS

River Ridge High School junior Joey Bennett, right, was given an orange T-shirt to wear as he and his buddies from left, Kris Sharp, Scott Camino and Alex Kiefel, came into the school auditorium for an assembly about safe driving. He and the other randomly chosen T-shirt wearers represented the number of teens around the nation who die each day in traffic crashes.

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By KLINT LOWRY | The Suncoast News

Published: February 23, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - The messages are nothing new, but every year there are those who need to hear it for the first time – before it's too late.

Don't drink and drive.

Always use a seat belt.

Don't drive distracted.

There is always a fresh crop of teenagers reaching driving age who need to learn these lessons.

On Wednesday, students at River Ridge High School got the word, but from schoolmates, not school or law enforcement officials.

Denise Russo, Emily Kanar, Stephanie Coleman, Natoshah Govoruhk and Hailey Mackin created and gave the presentation as a community service project, inspired by incidents close to home. The young women are all members of the Future Business Leaders of Tomorrow club.

"Our school lost four students last year, so we really wanted to focus this year," Hailey said, referring to the 2006-07 school year. "We're trying to get out how important it is to not drink and drive and to buckle up, things like that."

The project was a more ambitious continuation of one Emily and Stephanie started last year.

"Basically we focused on simpler ways to help the community be aware," Stephanie said, "and this year we decided we had to make it bigger, really get it out to them how important it is."

Last year, the girls put up posters and handed out flyers. This year, they created a full-scale audio-visual presentation.

The presentation gave a more youthful perspective to a message that is often met with rolling eyes and a "whatever" attitude when young people hear it from adults.

The first step was to go out and videotape interviews in which River Ridge students were quizzed about how much they know about drunken driving and teens.

"We interviewed four students from each grade to get a different outlook," Denise said.

When the video was presented to the junior class, its effectiveness could be seen and heard throughout the auditorium as the students reacted with laughs and jeers to seeing familiar faces up on the screen.

They paid attention, however.

The video showed a wide lack of knowledge and awareness about what the legal level for drunk driving is and about the magnitude of traffic-related accidents among people in their age range.

The legal blood-alcohol threshold for drunken driving in Florida is 0.08 percent – for adults. Under state law, the presence of any amount of alcohol in a driver younger than 21 is considered illegal.

Although not all teen traffic deaths are alcohol- or drug-related, 16,885 teens die each year in traffic-related crashes.

To further illustrate the grim statistics, the girls randomly handed out a number of orange T-shirts before the start of the presentation. About midway through, they had the people in the orange T-shirts stand.

Only then was it explained that each orange-clad student represented a teen who dies each day, on average, in a traffic crash.

The reaction appeared to be a mix of gallows humor and teen giddiness.

Then it was Natoshah's turned to speak, and within moments you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium.

"I lost a brother," she declared. "I know some of you in this room lost a friend."

A large collage of photos and news articles filled the screen as Natoshah recounted the story of her brother, Justin Shofner. He was one of the four River Ridge students who died in traffic crashes in recent years, none of which were believed to be alcohol related.

Shofner, 18, perished in October 2006, when the car he was driving swerved for unknown reasons into the path of oncoming traffic on S.R. 54.

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