Driven to distraction
Teens and cars can be a deadly combination, that's why one Toronto hospital is driving the point home
Feb. 10, 2006. 11:35 AM
You can almost smell the bravado off the 42 high school students as they sit in room D-506 at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre, clad in hoodies, jeans and teenage invincibility.
Until a police photo flashes up on the screen. A shattered windshield, imprinted with two sets of eyes, noses, mouths. The imprint of one bad decision, and faces that could be their own. In this car, the front-seat occupants were not wearing seatbelts.
Suddenly, the teenagers slumping in the back row sit up a little straighter.
With the photo of the empty downtown Toronto intersection, you can hear the sharp intake of breath. A crashed pickup truck is on the sidewalk and the blood of two dead pedestrians is streaked across the pavement.
A video re-enactment comes on. Four teens in a speeding car in broad daylight. One minute, they are laughing, horsing around, music blaring. The next, they are careening off the road and head-on into a tree, where the car crumples like tissue. Now the room is filled with the silence of people paying attention.
This is the P.A.R.T.Y. program, which stands for Prevent Alcohol and Risk-Related Trauma in Youth (http://www.partyprogram.com). It's a day-long session that teaches students 16 and up what can happen when you gamble with your safety and lose. Much of each session deals with the hazards of reckless driving — speeding, rowdy passengers, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs — that too often result in teenage injuries and death. The program has been running since 1986 and holds sessions twice a week. These days, it's booked a year in advance. The photos and video clips are graphic and gripping. Less than an hour in, a strapping 16-year-old boy wobbles to the doorway before one of the nurses on hand catches him as he faints. Happens all the time, she says.
Teenagers and driving have always been a combination that keeps parents up at night. But these days there are reasons to be even more concerned. Young drivers face more traffic than ever before, a huge number of distractions and a society in a perpetual rush. At the same time, thanks to the latest research, we know that adolescents are more at risk because their brains are still developing well into their 20s and until then, they lack impulse control, judgment and risk assessment skills.
Twice in the past month in Toronto, there have been tragic reminders. A minivan carrying four 17-year-olds away from their school at midday goes out of control and rolls, killing a boy who was not wearing a seatbelt when he was thrown from the vehicle. Police said speed was a factor.
A few weeks later, the city is rocked by the news that taxi driver Tahir Khan was killed when two 18-year-olds allegedly raced their parents' luxury cars up Mount Pleasant Rd. one evening. Both teens face criminal charges.
At the P.A.R.T.Y. program, Stephen Burns, a constable with Toronto Police Services, doesn't preach as he addresses the students from Martingrove Collegiate Institute in Toronto's west end. But he tells them the facts: Car crashes are the leading cause of death among teenagers. Many more youth are killed and injured by motor vehicles than the guns and gangs currently grabbing headlines.
"The very saddest thing I've had to do in my career is knock on parents' doors and say, `You're going to have to come with me because your son or daughter isn't coming home.'"
Program co-ordinator Sandi Kleinman asks the kids if they ever fail to wear seatbelts, or drive with too many people in the car, loud music or a driver who's had a couple of drinks. A lot of hands go up.
Later, when they visit the nearby Lyndhurst Centre for spinal cord rehabilitation, the students hear from someone who doesn't mince his words about what it's like to be paralyzed from the chest down.
"I don't ejaculate any more and I don't like that," says Elton Horner, 55. "Your sexuality is an important part of who you are and to lose that is devastating."
Horner was 33 when he drove home drunk, fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road. He woke up to life in a wheelchair. That was in 1983. Five years later, he volunteered to talk to kids through the P.A.R.T.Y. program. And he's been doing it ever since, one of three trauma survivors who share their stories in hopes they can provoke teenagers to think twice.
Horner's message to the kids echoes the one they have been hearing all day.
"If you ever get that queasy feeling in your stomach or you hear that little voice in your head before you're going to do something, don't do it," he tells them.
Teens are the largest group of drivers involved in crashes, and much of it comes down to lack of experience. A 16-year-old is three times more likely to be involved in a collision than a 17-year-old. That may be one reason New Jersey, where kids have to be 17 ½ to drive, has the lowest rate of teenage driver deaths in the U.S.
Add other factors to inexperience and the outcome can be deadly. Today, people are time-crunched, and it shows on the roads, even though statistics from the Natural Resources Canada indicate one hour of aggressive driving only saves an average of 2.5 minutes.
Distractions are another factor, says Brian Patterson, president of the Ontario Safety League. Today's teens have grown up in the age of multitasking. Patterson recalls that when he drove with the Canadian military in 1976, radios weren't permitted in the vehicles because they were considered too distracting. "Now kids think they can do five things at once," he says. Like many adults too, they think little of changing a CD, talking on a cellphone, even text messaging while at the wheel.
The average driver takes three seconds to lower their eyes and pop in a CD with their right hand, says Patterson. If you're driving at 100 kilometres an hour — the equivalent of travelling 27 metres a second — that means you are covering the distance of a football field without watching the road.
Driver distraction has become such a huge concern, especially for young drivers, that an international conference was held on the issue in Toronto in November, the first of its kind. The Insurance Bureau of Canada, knowing that drivers age 16 to 24 are by far the heaviest group of cellphone users while behind the wheel, has just launched a study at the University of Calgary on how talking on the phone affects the reaction times, eye movements and vehicle control of novice drivers.
Passengers can be the biggest distraction. A Cincinnati television station recently showed why, when it installed a small camera on the dashboard of a car full of young men and then let it roll as they drove away. Within seconds, you notice the front-seat passenger isn't wearing a seatbelt. Soon he reaches over to honk the horn, and hoots with laughter. The driver is smacked, poked and prodded by his buddies beside and behind him and turns around to talk to them as he drives. Interviewed afterward, the front-seat passenger said he didn't remember doing any of those things.
The news report cited recent statistics from California that found crashes rise almost exponentially with each additional teenage passenger. According to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, G2 drivers aged 19 and under who carry one passenger have five times more collisions than those over 20. With four passengers or more, they crash almost 11 times more often.
This is why 31 jurisdictions in Canada and the U.S. now have passenger restrictions in effect for teenage drivers, including Ontario.
Trying to come up with an in-your-face message to a bunch of kids who have grown up watching E.R. and C.S.I. is a challenge. So the P.A.R.T.Y. program includes video of real car-crash victims in the trauma unit, a tour through the trauma rooms and on the wards, where they see a man with a halo screwed into his skull to help heal a broken neck. A paramedic and hospital trauma surgeon always take time to address every group.
Kleinman also reads aloud a letter to the students from the mother of an accident victim.
It tells the story of her 20-year-old son, who wasn't wearing a seatbelt when he crashed a car on his way to work one morning. Seventeen years later, this woman's son cannot walk or talk, and gets nutrition from a tube leading into his stomach. He lives in a chronic-care hospital.
"The grief just does not go away," she writes. Several girls are wiping away tears.
Afterward, the kids struggle to express things they say they've never really thought about. Like how their own parents would feel if something bad happened to them. Or what it would be like to live with being responsible for the death or injury of someone else.
Vincent DeFreitas, 16, shakes his head. "This makes it real," he says. "When you actually see people that this has happened to ... it really makes a impact."
"I am speechless," says Nimalka Weeasuriya, 16.
Her friend Aditi Raut is wide-eyed. "I am a huge risk-taker," she says. "There are definitely going to be a lot of changes in my lifestyle."
Kleinman thanks them for coming as she wraps up the session.
"And remember, I hope I never see any of you back here in the patient-care areas unless maybe it's because you're a doctor or a nurse."
They head out to get back on the bus. They seem different from the kids who strutted in a mere six hours ago. Maybe they've left some of that bravado behind. The P.A.R.T.Y. program staff can only hope.
The Article
Teens and cars can be a deadly combination, that's why one Toronto hospital is driving the point home
Feb. 10, 2006. 11:35 AM
You can almost smell the bravado off the 42 high school students as they sit in room D-506 at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre, clad in hoodies, jeans and teenage invincibility.
Until a police photo flashes up on the screen. A shattered windshield, imprinted with two sets of eyes, noses, mouths. The imprint of one bad decision, and faces that could be their own. In this car, the front-seat occupants were not wearing seatbelts.
Suddenly, the teenagers slumping in the back row sit up a little straighter.
With the photo of the empty downtown Toronto intersection, you can hear the sharp intake of breath. A crashed pickup truck is on the sidewalk and the blood of two dead pedestrians is streaked across the pavement.
A video re-enactment comes on. Four teens in a speeding car in broad daylight. One minute, they are laughing, horsing around, music blaring. The next, they are careening off the road and head-on into a tree, where the car crumples like tissue. Now the room is filled with the silence of people paying attention.
This is the P.A.R.T.Y. program, which stands for Prevent Alcohol and Risk-Related Trauma in Youth (http://www.partyprogram.com). It's a day-long session that teaches students 16 and up what can happen when you gamble with your safety and lose. Much of each session deals with the hazards of reckless driving — speeding, rowdy passengers, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs — that too often result in teenage injuries and death. The program has been running since 1986 and holds sessions twice a week. These days, it's booked a year in advance. The photos and video clips are graphic and gripping. Less than an hour in, a strapping 16-year-old boy wobbles to the doorway before one of the nurses on hand catches him as he faints. Happens all the time, she says.
Teenagers and driving have always been a combination that keeps parents up at night. But these days there are reasons to be even more concerned. Young drivers face more traffic than ever before, a huge number of distractions and a society in a perpetual rush. At the same time, thanks to the latest research, we know that adolescents are more at risk because their brains are still developing well into their 20s and until then, they lack impulse control, judgment and risk assessment skills.
Twice in the past month in Toronto, there have been tragic reminders. A minivan carrying four 17-year-olds away from their school at midday goes out of control and rolls, killing a boy who was not wearing a seatbelt when he was thrown from the vehicle. Police said speed was a factor.
A few weeks later, the city is rocked by the news that taxi driver Tahir Khan was killed when two 18-year-olds allegedly raced their parents' luxury cars up Mount Pleasant Rd. one evening. Both teens face criminal charges.
At the P.A.R.T.Y. program, Stephen Burns, a constable with Toronto Police Services, doesn't preach as he addresses the students from Martingrove Collegiate Institute in Toronto's west end. But he tells them the facts: Car crashes are the leading cause of death among teenagers. Many more youth are killed and injured by motor vehicles than the guns and gangs currently grabbing headlines.
"The very saddest thing I've had to do in my career is knock on parents' doors and say, `You're going to have to come with me because your son or daughter isn't coming home.'"
Program co-ordinator Sandi Kleinman asks the kids if they ever fail to wear seatbelts, or drive with too many people in the car, loud music or a driver who's had a couple of drinks. A lot of hands go up.
Later, when they visit the nearby Lyndhurst Centre for spinal cord rehabilitation, the students hear from someone who doesn't mince his words about what it's like to be paralyzed from the chest down.
"I don't ejaculate any more and I don't like that," says Elton Horner, 55. "Your sexuality is an important part of who you are and to lose that is devastating."
Horner was 33 when he drove home drunk, fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road. He woke up to life in a wheelchair. That was in 1983. Five years later, he volunteered to talk to kids through the P.A.R.T.Y. program. And he's been doing it ever since, one of three trauma survivors who share their stories in hopes they can provoke teenagers to think twice.
Horner's message to the kids echoes the one they have been hearing all day.
"If you ever get that queasy feeling in your stomach or you hear that little voice in your head before you're going to do something, don't do it," he tells them.
Teens are the largest group of drivers involved in crashes, and much of it comes down to lack of experience. A 16-year-old is three times more likely to be involved in a collision than a 17-year-old. That may be one reason New Jersey, where kids have to be 17 ½ to drive, has the lowest rate of teenage driver deaths in the U.S.
Add other factors to inexperience and the outcome can be deadly. Today, people are time-crunched, and it shows on the roads, even though statistics from the Natural Resources Canada indicate one hour of aggressive driving only saves an average of 2.5 minutes.
Distractions are another factor, says Brian Patterson, president of the Ontario Safety League. Today's teens have grown up in the age of multitasking. Patterson recalls that when he drove with the Canadian military in 1976, radios weren't permitted in the vehicles because they were considered too distracting. "Now kids think they can do five things at once," he says. Like many adults too, they think little of changing a CD, talking on a cellphone, even text messaging while at the wheel.
The average driver takes three seconds to lower their eyes and pop in a CD with their right hand, says Patterson. If you're driving at 100 kilometres an hour — the equivalent of travelling 27 metres a second — that means you are covering the distance of a football field without watching the road.
Driver distraction has become such a huge concern, especially for young drivers, that an international conference was held on the issue in Toronto in November, the first of its kind. The Insurance Bureau of Canada, knowing that drivers age 16 to 24 are by far the heaviest group of cellphone users while behind the wheel, has just launched a study at the University of Calgary on how talking on the phone affects the reaction times, eye movements and vehicle control of novice drivers.
Passengers can be the biggest distraction. A Cincinnati television station recently showed why, when it installed a small camera on the dashboard of a car full of young men and then let it roll as they drove away. Within seconds, you notice the front-seat passenger isn't wearing a seatbelt. Soon he reaches over to honk the horn, and hoots with laughter. The driver is smacked, poked and prodded by his buddies beside and behind him and turns around to talk to them as he drives. Interviewed afterward, the front-seat passenger said he didn't remember doing any of those things.
The news report cited recent statistics from California that found crashes rise almost exponentially with each additional teenage passenger. According to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, G2 drivers aged 19 and under who carry one passenger have five times more collisions than those over 20. With four passengers or more, they crash almost 11 times more often.
This is why 31 jurisdictions in Canada and the U.S. now have passenger restrictions in effect for teenage drivers, including Ontario.
Trying to come up with an in-your-face message to a bunch of kids who have grown up watching E.R. and C.S.I. is a challenge. So the P.A.R.T.Y. program includes video of real car-crash victims in the trauma unit, a tour through the trauma rooms and on the wards, where they see a man with a halo screwed into his skull to help heal a broken neck. A paramedic and hospital trauma surgeon always take time to address every group.
Kleinman also reads aloud a letter to the students from the mother of an accident victim.
It tells the story of her 20-year-old son, who wasn't wearing a seatbelt when he crashed a car on his way to work one morning. Seventeen years later, this woman's son cannot walk or talk, and gets nutrition from a tube leading into his stomach. He lives in a chronic-care hospital.
"The grief just does not go away," she writes. Several girls are wiping away tears.
Afterward, the kids struggle to express things they say they've never really thought about. Like how their own parents would feel if something bad happened to them. Or what it would be like to live with being responsible for the death or injury of someone else.
Vincent DeFreitas, 16, shakes his head. "This makes it real," he says. "When you actually see people that this has happened to ... it really makes a impact."
"I am speechless," says Nimalka Weeasuriya, 16.
Her friend Aditi Raut is wide-eyed. "I am a huge risk-taker," she says. "There are definitely going to be a lot of changes in my lifestyle."
Kleinman thanks them for coming as she wraps up the session.
"And remember, I hope I never see any of you back here in the patient-care areas unless maybe it's because you're a doctor or a nurse."
They head out to get back on the bus. They seem different from the kids who strutted in a mere six hours ago. Maybe they've left some of that bravado behind. The P.A.R.T.Y. program staff can only hope.
The Article
