Reflecting on safe driving week 2019

REFLECTING ON SAFE DRIVING WEEK

From May 13th to May 17th, Cranberry Area High School held its annual safe driving week, headed by journalism students, Danielle Peterson and Tyler Comiske. Together, they planned out new activities such as having Campus Quest challenges related to driving statistics for gym classes, as well as classic props like the wreckage of a car.

This year, their theme wasn’t only to be a safe driver, but also a safe passenger. Several videos were released featuring unsafe riders to help push that message during safe driving week.

After they finished taking everything  down for the year, I asked them some reflective questions regarding their experiences and ideas during safe driving week.

Q:How long did safe driving week preparation last?

A:7 weeks before.

Q:What were your most innovative ideas, in your opinion?

A:Instead of an assembly, we incorporated gym classes and brought ideas into their activities.

Q:What do you think were the most impactful activities and props?

A:The gym activities and the crashed car. We think the crash was a good visual that tied the statistics on the posters into real life. We think the gym activities were good because people could ignore the posters and even the crash but everyone has gym class, making it a great way to make sure everyone is involved.

Q:What message or messages did you want to convey during safe driving week on top of being a safe driver and rider?

A:The message that we really wanted to convey was that distracted driving is even more lethal than drunk driving. We also wanted people to realize that taking your eyes off the road for just one second can end in a crash.

Q:Are you satisfied with student participation and is there any way it can improve?

A:Overall yes, we are satisfied. We think including gym classes improved participation because at an assembly, people get bored and don’t pay attention because it doesn’t really involve them.

Q:Is there anything you’d change or improve?

A:The weather. We wrote all over the walkway with chalk and it got rained away. We would also like to have both the gym activities and the assembly. We had to rely on the gym classes for explanation and we think the gym classes would improve participation in the assembly.

Q:What advice do you have for whoever runs it next year?

A:We came up with a little acronym that we call DEPA. It stands for delegate (delegate the work between your peers), exterminate (exterminate inaction and time wasting), propagate (propagate the project and get as many involved as you can), and appreciate (appreciate your team because they’re all valuable and necessary). 

Q:What were the most stressful moments?

A:We came to school after the Jr. High dance and saw that part of our wall mural was torn down.

Q:What were your fears going into this?

A:We were afraid there would be very little student participation and also not having enough jobs for everyone.

Q:Did anything go wrong during the events?

A:There was some miscommunication amongst/between JPub members about what still needed to be done. Despite this, everything was finished in time.

Q:Did you learn anything from this experience?

A:We were surprised by all the facts we learned. They were mind-blowing and we had no idea how bad these issues were.

Q:If given the option, would you do it again?

A:With what we know now, definitely.