Buckle up? Challenge accepted
Photo courtesy of TINA BRACKEBUSCH Bruce Bailey, Wallace High School teacher and athletic director, hands out cold hard cash to students for wearing their seatbelts as they leave school.
The front end of Austin McKinnon’s wrecked Nissan Pathfinder following his collision with a guard rail on Nov. 10. Becuase of the seat belt challenge, both McKinnon and his passenger, Isaiah Webb, walked away from the incident with only cuts and bruises.
WALLACE — Seat belts save lives.
That has been the message coming out of Wallace High School ever since they accepted the National Organizations for Youth Safety Seat Belts Save Challenge on Oct. 25.
By the end of the challenge, not only were more students using their seatbelts, but two of them in particular got a first-hand look at how their safety devices can help.
NOYS explains that the challenge, sponsored by the National Road Safety Foundation (NRSF), is a “campaign designed to educate teen drivers about the dangers of riding in a car without wearing a seat belt, and increase the number of teens who regularly wear a seatbelt while driving or riding in a car.”
Before the challenge began, WHS teachers Tina Brackebusch and Bruce Bailey, documented how many students were wearing their seat belts as they left the student parking lot.
They found that only 20 percent were buckling up.
Brackebusch said that, “parents were shocked when they learned that their kids weren’t wearing their seat belts.”
To garner student involvement, Brackebusch enlisted the help of the freshman class leadership.
Carter Bailey, President for the freshman class, Will Farkas, Vice-president, Hayden Hogamier, Treasurer, and Connor Denson, Secretary, spearheaded the two-week and two-day challenge by running social media accounts, doing morning announcements, and holding an assembly.
“Our teacher, Mrs, Brackebusch, came to us and asked if we wanted to take charge on it- and we agreed,” Farkas said.
During the assembly which kicked off the challenge, students were shown statistics on wearing seat belts and also heard a presentation from the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office.
On the following day, WHS students pledged in writing to wear their seat belts 100 percent of the time.
For WHS students Austin McKinnon and Isaiah Webb, its a good thing they kept this pledge.
On Nov. 10, the last day of the challenge, the two students left Wallace to go to work in Kellogg.
While on I-90, snowy road conditions caused McKinnon’s Nissan Pathfinder to crash into a guardrail just before the Silverton exit.
Initially striking the front right side, the car continued to spin and hit the guardrail until it came to a stop facing the opposite direction they were traveling.
Thanks to the deployment of their airbags and the use of their seat belts, the two kids walked away with only cuts and bruises.
McKinnon admitted after the incident that he does not normally wear his seat belt, but because of the challenge, he and Webb were that day.
In addition to the announcements and reminders from the freshman leadership, Brackebusch and B. Bailey randomly surprised students who were leaving for lunch with cash rewards for buckling up.
C. Bailey stressed that all of this effort was to “make sure people are wearing their sea belts.”
At the conclusion of the challenge, the final survey showed that of 45 student drivers and passengers leaving WHS, only ten were not buckled in.
Brackebusch explained that the most common reasons she heard from the students who do not wear their seat belts ranged from that they are “uncomfortable,” to simply forgetting to put them on.
She added that some even believe that it is safer to not wear them.
“We are trying to dispel some of those myths.”
Since most of the students drive older vehicles that do not come with seat belt alarms, raising awareness is even more crucial.
NOYS and NHTSA report that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers in the US.
In 2014 alone, 1,717 young drivers died and an estimated 170,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes.
Data also shows that, compared to other age groups, teens have a lower rate of seat belt use.
For young drivers who died in crashes, only 54 percent were restrained at the time of the crash.
Of teens that died in passenger vehicle crashes, over half (56 percent) were not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash.
Research shows that seat belts reduce serious crash-related injuries and deaths by about half.