A Fair Warning : Staged traffic fatality shows students the realities of drinking and driving

RONAN — It may have been graphic, it might have been disturbing, but it got the point across.

The Ronan High School parking lot was the scene of a staged head-on collision last week. A handful of students reenacted a traffic fatality, authentic enough to shake up some of the students to the point of tears.

With two totaled vehicles, actors wearing bloody T-shirts screaming in agony and a dozen or so real paramedics, policemen and firemen acting with haste, the scene was "as real as it is going to get" said School Resource Officer Lucky Larson.

Before rescue personnel responded to the scene, an actual 9-1-1 call was played over two box-speakers. Students heard a frantic woman trying to explain to emergency dispatch where the location of the car wreck was.

Blocks away, sirens could be heard racing to RHS. Within a minute or so, rescue personnel arrived and carried out their duties as though it were a real-life incident. Jaws of Life peeled the tops off one the vehicles and the actors were carefully extricated and placed in ambulances. One of them was taken away in a LifeFlight helicopter.

One actor laid on the pavement, lifeless. A paramedic checked his pulse, determined that he was dead and placed a sheet over his body. Another actor was removed from the driver's seat and was given a field sobriety test. He was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car.

The way spectators reacted, the scene might as well have been real. Visibly moved by the event, students shared tears and hugs all around.

"It really opened up my eyes," said sophomore Dominique Charlton.

"I've seen this kind of thing way too much," Larson told the students. He wasn't being cruel when he helped stage the collision.

He wasn't trying to traumatize students. He was simply trying to drive a message home.

"If you choose to drink and drive, this could happen to you," he said.

Prior to the staged traffic fatality, students gathered in the school auditorium where Larson told them that the hardest part of his job is informing parents that they lost a son or daughter in a car wreck.

"I've driven fathers and mothers to the morgue so they could ID their son or daughter," he said.

Lined up behind him were over a dozen students wearing T-shirts that read "I am but a memory." Every 15 minutes throughout the morning, a student or teacher was randomly selected to represent an alcohol related traffic fatality, their faces painted white, in what was known as "ghost outs."

"Between 8 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. these people were killed in a car accident in America," Larson said pointing to the "ghosts" behind him. "A car crash kills every 15 minutes."

Throughout the day, the ghosts walked silently among students — a reminder that anyone of them could be next.

The "Ghost Out" program is nationally known and uses theatrics to inform teens of the dangers of drinking and driving. But it goes further than just alcohol, said Lance Ewers, Polson High School resource officer.

The program addresses drug use and teen sex.

"Never before in your lives have you had so much opportunity," Ewers said during the assembly. "The decisions you make today will affect you the rest of your life."

Witnessing fellow students get hauled away in ambulances opened up old wounds for many in attendance. RHS has lost several students to alcohol related deaths over the past few months.

"Ronan, you're on the frontline," said Ewers. "You have lost student body members here."

"I've been to too many funerals," said student Brianna Lake. "It was really hard sitting through that. I'm sitting there saying 'I know those people. This could happen to anyone of us.'"