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Students for Seatbelts
October 28, 2008 |
A car crash can happen in an instant and teenagers are
more at risk than any other kind of driver. “This is the age group where we see
the lowest compliance with seatbelts and unfortunately this is also the age group
where we see trauma as the leading cause of death. Out of the number of patients
that we see about 80 percent of our patients don’t wear seatbelts,” says Lee Memorial
Hospital trauma surgeon, Dr. Rie Aihara.
But the students at Cypress Lake High School wanted to help change those statistics.
The members of Students Against Drunk Driving or SADD launched a campaign to encourage
their classmates to buckle up before leaving the school parking lot.
Mckenszee Stephens is a senior at Cypress Lake High School. She says, “The whole
purpose of this group is to reward students for thinking positive and doing the
positive thing instead of the negative thing. It just reminded them oh, okay I’ll
put my seatbelt on. Just little things like that can help save lives.”
Dr. Rie Aihara says the students were really able to make a difference. “It’s easy
for us to really tell people the importance of wearing seatbelts but when it actually
comes from your peers, you know people who are actually wearing their seatbelt,
I think it sends a strong message.”
The SADD students were able to increase the use of seatbelts at Cypress Lake High
School from 72 percent to nearly 90 percent. They were rewarded for the hard work
when the Cypress Lake High School SADD program was recently presented with a check
from Lee Memorial Health System for 1,000 dollars. |
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