BETHEL — More than 200 Telstar High School students participated in a workshop on Friday morning that revealed the stark reality and consequences of driving impaired: whether from drugs, alcohol, cell phone use or other distractions.

In 20-minute sessions conducted by more than 40 community members, state and county police, and emergency responders, students learned about field sobriety tests for operating under the influence of drugs or alcohol, distractions and statistics, an accident call from start to finish, and decision making.

The workshop concluded with a sobering YouTube video depicting a fatal mock crash staged at a high school that ended with the young driver being charged, jailed and convicted of vehicular homicide.

The two-hour workshop also revealed the area has a problem, especially with teenagers driving impaired.

“I would say that of all the towns in Oxford County, it’s probably higher than average here, and I’m not sure what the reasoning behind it is,” Oxford County Sheriff’s Deputy Josh Wyman said  between sessions.

The man behind the workshop, David Hanscom, the assistant director of Bethel Rescue, put it together in less than a year with help from those involved and the Bethel Rotary Club.

“We heard about other communities doing it, and knowing the statistics of young people being involved in accidents, we thought it would be a good idea,” Hanscom said.

“Over the past few years here, it has been a common occurrence to see young people involved in accidents, whether they were caused by operating under the influence or cell phones.

“Some of them have been minor in nature — fender benders — all the way up through a year or two ago, the girl that went into the river on the West Bethel-Bethel line, and obviously she lost her life, to the four-wheeler accident out on the Rabbit Road involving a young girl who lost her life,” Hanscom said.

To illustrate the need for continued education, Wyman and fellow Deputy William Nelson asked during their sessions on drunken driving and a simulated traffic stop for a show of hands to indicate if students had attended parties or functions where teens drank alcohol or alcohol was involved.

Ten to 20 hands went up in each session. That number usually dropped to half when they next asked how many knew teens who drank booze at gravel pit parties and then drove away drunk.

For seniors Vicki Lowell of Newry and Victoria Forkus of Bryant Pond, the message about implications of what can happen when driving impaired came through loud and clear.

“One of my friends was just involved in a fatal accident,” Lowell said afterward. “She wasn’t the one that died, but it was really eye-opening. It’s so real, and it’s scary.”

She said the cause of the accident was her friend’s unfamiliarity with the roads and looking at her global positioning system.

That’s why Lowell said that for her the most important part of the workshop was the walk-through by Bethel fire Chief Michael Jodrey and Bethel Rescue officials of a 911 accident call from start to finish. Some students were even strapped to backboards.

Lowell said that interaction really drove home “how real it is.”

Forkus shared a similar experience.

“I’m like a pretty cautious driver as it is, but I was in a really brief crash like around this time last year,” she said. “I was playing around with my radio, and I rear-ended someone, but it wasn’t like a serious crash. No one was injured, and the other car wasn’t affected at all, but my car was pretty beat up.”

That’s why she said the workshop “really opened my eyes.”

“I didn’t know that like out of all the age groups, teens are like the ones who get in the most crashes,” Forkus said.

Asked if she thought there is a problem with impaired driving in the area, Lowell said, “Oh, yeah.”

“We all do it,” she said. “We’re not conscious of it, and we don’t do it intentionally, but we all do it. It’s convenient, like having cell phones and driving.”

But Lowell said the workshop “makes me more conscious now of what I’m doing in my surroundings, and that what I do can hurt other people.”

That’s the connection that Telstar Principal Daniel Hart, Hanscom and instructors sought to make.

“What you did today was fabulous!” Hart told them during a debriefing. “This is what we wanted.”

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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