The students of the Lampman School were given a startling reminder about the pitfalls of drinking and driving Thursday.
The members of the school's Students Against Drinking and Driving club along with the town's emergency medical services personnel, fire department and RCMP officers from the Estevan detachment teamed together to hold a mock accident in the school parking lot.
The scenario for the realistic exercise saw a vehicle with four teenagers, driven by a drunk driver, become involved in a serious accident. The driver of the vehicle was killed in the accident while his three passengers were all seriously injured. Upon arriving on the scene the EMS members went to work on stabilizing the injured students while the firefighters used the jaws of life to extricate the kids from the car.
Along with participating in the exercise, Const. Greg Classen of the Estevan RCMP also spoke to the students in the upper grades who were part of the event. Classen said the biggest message they want to pass on to the students is to make the right choices when it comes to something like drinking and driving.
"It's all about choices," said Classen. "Making the right choices for yourself and your friends, especially in small communities like this where everyone is affected when someone is seriously hurt or dies. It's not only going to effect the people involved in the accident, it's going to affect everyone around."
Classen added another message they relayed to the students is that just one drink can impair their ability to safely operate a vehicle and can also cost them their licence.
"With the graduated driver's licence program, one drink is too many and your licence can be taken away for 30 days. You have to plan a safe drive home and we are coming across more and more kids who are making the right decision, who are being that designated driver and it is good to see," said Classen, who noted that exercises such as a mock accident are good tools to get through to students.
"We might see some of these kids in two months and they might come up to us and say 'remember that mock accident, it changed my mind on some things.' We just hope everyone makes the right decisions."
