Mock crash scene shows the real-life consequences of distracted driving

New Madrid County Central High School students watch as first responders work the mock accident scene at their school on April 13, 2023. (Jill Bock/Standard Democrat)

NEW MADRID, Mo. - The crumpled vehicles, the broken glass, the bloodied bodies on the ground - it was all designed as a hard-hitting lesson for students at New Madrid County Central High School.

On April 13, the Missouri Department of Transportation, New Madrid Police Department, New Madrid County Ambulance District, Missouri State Highway Patrol, New Madrid County Sheriff’s Department, Sullivan’s Towing, Lilbourn and New Madrid Fire Departments and Air Evac Lifeteam 3 of Sikeston working with school officials staged a mock accident. The purpose was to educate the students about the dangers of impaired and distracted driving.

According to Clark Parrott, public information officer with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, every day 17 teenagers die in traffic crashes.

Students at New Madrid County Central High School watch as the scene unfolds during a mock accident at the school. The event is designed to show the consequences of distracted or impaired driving. (Jill Bock/Standard Democrat)

The deaths are attributed to speed, impairment and distracted driving. Lives can be saved, he continued, simply by drivers and passengers buckling their seat belts each time they get in a car.

“New Madrid County Central High School has been identified as one of the schools we are going to focus on to try to get that seat belt usage rate up,” Parrott said. “The last MoDOT survey that they did had New Madrid’s seat belt usage at about 43%. That’s pretty bad. So if we can get one person to put that seat belt on today that didn’t yesterday then we have won.”

Thursday’s mock accident was one of about a dozen staged throughout Southeast Missouri for students. Typically they are held in the fall close to school homecomings or in the spring as prom and graduation are nearing. New Madrid County Central’s prom was Saturday.

New Madrid County Central High School students capture the arrival of ambulance personnel with their cell phones. (Jill Bock/Standard Democrat)

“We want to make sure that everybody is at prom, everybody is at graduation instead of people being absent from prom or graduation due to a traffic crash,” the officer said.

Students also had the opportunity to learn about the importance of seat belt use through the Patrol’s roll-over simulator on April 12.

The educational events - both the roll-over simulator and the mock accident - are designed to reinforce the lessons of safe driving not just for the students but their parents as well.

Parrott pointed out while the fatality rate in Missouri is currently 17% below last year’s number it is still too high. In 2013, he said, the state had its fewest number of traffic fatalities at 756 but it has climbed steadily since then to over 1,000.

“We have to get it going back the other way,” he said. “How do we do that? Through education and shock value to try to get people to put their phones down, not drive impaired, not speed and to put their seat belts on every time they get in a car.”