h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Warning: this is going to be a very long journal entry.


Yesterday and today, my school indoctrinated us against drinking and driving. We knew something like this was going to happen ahead of time, because we were having two special assembly periods allotted for it. But this is what happened.

Yesterday, we went out to the parking lot, where there was a re-enactment of a car crash caused by a drunk driver. I couldn't see or hear very well: I was in the next-to-last row, everyone was standing up in front of me and the mics weren't very loud. It was much better to talk to the people around me than to watch, as well-known students from my school pretended to be a drunk driver and the girls in the other car who were injured and killed. The local media — from the school newspaper to the local branch of Fox News — swarmed the scene, and then the entire emergency response crew of the city, seemingly, including two police cars, an ambulance, a fire truck and a fire department helicopter, arrived in the parking lot, as they made to extricate the "wounded" girls from their car. It was ridiculously overdone and really rather dull, as I couldn't even see anything. As I remarked to my friends, what if there had been a real emergency, but the entire fire department was in the school parking lot? All-round, we agreed it was a waste of time, and I said so in class and to my friends: the people who were most emotionally affected by the dramatization are the people who do not drink and who aren't likely to make the choice to abuse alcohol. The people who already do don't care, and wouldn't care about the assembly. What's more, it's not as if not drinking and driving is a conscious decision you can really make ahead of time: if you're drunk your judgement is impaired, and deciding to get into the car then is a spur-of-the-moment thing that won't necessarily be dissuaded by you suddenly remembering something that was scared into you at a school assembly.

And this is exactly what I said during English this morning. I argued that while this might have been seen as "positive" indoctrination, it was still indoctrination — scare tactics and overblown melodrama aren't the best way to make a difference, if it is even likely at all that a difference is made. And although I saw myself in the right, I was immediately jumped upon. There were all these girls who argued that "if it makes a difference to just one person, it's worth it." Did it even do that, I wonder? One girl, who's very involved in the school drama department, said that the demonstration was analogous to a stage show, and that if people were so much as talking about it, that's something. Perhaps this is precisely the problem: this issue shouldn't be a stage show. One boy said he found it unfortunate that they were trying to dramatize it instead of appealing to our reason, and then all the girls said that appealing to "everyone else's" reason won’t work, and that it's only my class of "gifted" students (essentially) who can be logical. Well, that's just as insulting to the other 2400 students at the school as it is to us.

I hate this, where I'm on the seemingly "insensitive" side, cause I don't want it to seem like I'm uncaring about what I certainly see as a pressing issue. But it does seem like it's being gone about in totally the wrong way. I talked to my history teacher, and he told me a story of a student he knew his first year at my school, who had gotten himself killed while in a car and drunk the night of graduation. He said — and I agreed — that instead of a re-enactment, we would do better to focus on real kids who had died, and to put their pictures up in the quad and eulogize them instead would have a more lasting effect. And I agreed.

Then in fourth period was probably the best part of the whole thing: a very well-edited video detailing the fictionalized story. The "dead" girls were certainly victimized ridiculously, but it was more "factually" (if this can at all be said to be factual) presented and well-done. But then — then was the weird part.

We all went to another assembly following the film, and then the thing started. I saw the kids who had been involved in the previous day's re-enactment, and I thought they were going to talk about their experiences and it would all be very dull and usual. Well, they did talk about their experiences — but not really the real ones. They were still in character. The kid, Eric, who had been the "drunk" one talked about being arrested, and being remorseful. One of the girls who was meant to be dead talked about being... well... dead, and being deprived of opportunities and not being able to say goodbye to her mother. Then her mother spoke, which was just creepy. She had written a praising letter to her "dead" daughter, eulogizing the girl who was really sitting right next to her. I must have commented on how weird this was to my friends sitting next to me at least five times. I just can't get over it still. She eulogized her dead daughter who was sitting right next to her. And crying, of course. So many people were crying — and this wasn't real. The father of one of the other "dead" girls spoke too, and then there were some more usual and actually probably better presentations, from a woman whose nephew had really been killed by a drunk driver, and the chief at the fire station, who told his experiences responding to such emergencies. But it was all very strange and very awkward, and then we went back to class. And I couldn't help thinking, what about the people who really die? Why aren't we hearing about them, instead of the people who... well, didn't?

Later that afternoon, in biology class, we learned even more. My bio teacher is the sponsor of the Students Against Drunk Driving club, and she told us that there was more that we didn't see, because Eric was actually taken to the police station and booked, and the dead girls were actually put in body bags and taken to the hospital and pronounced dead in front of their parents, and then were taken away. They spent the night at a camp in the mountains and my bio teacher chaperoned them there, but they didn't see their parents until the assembly this morning, and for all intents and purposes they were treated as dead.

It's terrifying. Not because I'm so concerned that this will happen to me or I'm so worried about incidents of drunk driving. Yeah, they're terrible, but I'm more disturbed by the fact that our emotions are being manipulated for a fake cause like this. It's sensationalism, the same sensationalism that makes reality television shows about accidents and murders and whatnot, the same sensationalism that Americans (and, I'm sure, people of other nationalities too) watch because they enjoy having their emotions toyed with. I'm the first person to admit that raw, emotional films and books and television programs (not reality tv, but the really well-done drama) can be very powerful. But not like this, and not without my consent.

In "life skills" programs over the years at school, they've talked about mostly two things. With the exception of the odd tutorial about how to put a condom on a banana, they teach us about substance abuse and they teach us about self-esteem and how to avoid depression. And is it right to teach about one at the expense of another? Is it right to scare kids about substance abuse by asking them to pretend to be dead? There are already enough teenagers who are actually dead, thank you very much, and many of them of their own volition. How many other emotionally impressionable young people do we want to encourage to volunteer to kick the bucket, whether for a story or for real? How can they conscionably do that to us, and to them, the "victims"?

And is all this, all this emotional tearing at heartstrings, going to do anything? Of course not. They made some people cry, sure, but that's hardly an accomplishment. How many of those of us who weren't crying came away with the notion that we should always have a designated driver? How many of us had an idea of practical ways to solve a tragic problem, and how many of us were just disgusted with a melodramatic and sensationalized waste of time? Because in the end, that's all that these two days of shock therapy were.

I told my mom my story and she told me the only new thing about drinking situations that I learned today, and in fact it was something that they've never told us in school. Mom told me that in her experience, students aren't getting drunk out of their minds every weekend because it's a recreational activity. They're doing it out of desperation because they have nothing else to do, no other way to live their lives. It's not the highlight of their weekend, it's a way to get through it. Yes, I know everyone has their reasons. But maybe these should be explored. Eric "killed" two girls and "wounded" one yesterday. But why? Did anyone ever ask that question these past two days? To be honest, I can't remember hearing it. Did anyone ever consider that Eric was depressed, that he was lonely, that he went to the fictional party because he could think of no other way to deal with his fictional problems than to drown them in drink? Maybe Eric really has problems, outside of this fantasy TV world of car crashes and deaths. But no one's ever going to know that, including maybe Eric himself, because it's not as if school exactly encourages us to talk about our problems. It's not as if guidance counselors are exactly people you can talk to. They're people who order your class schedule and people you're sent to if you screw up really bad in class. It's not as if the health teacher or the administration or any of these other figures are exactly approachable. If you have no friends and you hate your parents and there's nothing you can think but that your life sucks, you're not going to act rationally. You're not going to remember your public-school scare tactics about substance abuse, you're not going to remember the stuffed lion you won for a drug resistance program essay contest, you're not going to remember what driver's ed told you, what health class told you, what your school told you when they killed two girls to make a point. You're going to take that bottle of beer or wine or brandy or vodka and you're going to drink it, if you're that desperate. Maybe we should think about that.

In the end, isn't it a bit odd to think that what I'm proposing is radical? But it is. Talking to students instead of scaring them is a strange thing in my public high school, and I expect it is in many others' too. But until the people who run schools and their communities get over their fear of talking to the adolescents they baby-sit and actually consider interacting with them and (shock of shocks) educating them, it's never going to happen. And a problem that has been around since the advent of the automobile will (shock of shocks) never be solved.

There's nothing new in this, I lost a friend in 1978 - hit head-on by a drunk driver on the wrong side of the road. His father was in the passenger seat, he'd had a drink, my friend hadn't. I'd just had a baby - I couldn't attend the funeral. I still remember how I felt, new life, then death. And it was such a waste, he was an only child so his parents not only lost their son but future grandchildren, maybe.

Traveller in Time I have been paying attention
"Ok, you have some problems with the presentation style as used by your school.

Let me guess: you find the television news programs boring ? Three television sets with subtitles will do

Research has proven nah, advertisement has proven most people will be influenced by a multi media presentation. The more 'realistic' the better it is. "

That does sound like a load of melodramatic cobblers.

However, it's not true to say that drinking and driving is not a conscious decision: it is. It may be a drunken conscious decision, but it's still conscious.

I'm ashamed to say that I've driven myself while drunk. I never do it now, and that's not because I'm never drunk. It really is possible to learn not to.

Zube

I'm sorry to hear about your sad story, GB - but as you said, it's nothing new.

I don't have television at home, TiT, but I don't object to CNN or the BBC or networks like that - at least they report things that tend to really happen, and don't manufacture news to make a point.

That may be so, Zube - and of course I speak with utter ignorance. But it seems unlikely to me that someone's going to be drunk and say, "Hmm, I want to drive right now, but I remember that presentation in school when people pretended to be dead, and it made the consequences seem so scary that I don't think I will." Really now.

It took me a while to realise it, but once I remembered I became pretty surprised that there was no mention of things like designated drivers, which seem to me to be better at-the-time solutions than elaborate and expensive theatrics.

EMR, fact: drunk driving kills, maims and ruins lives.

Fact: indoctrination like this works very well on people less intelligent than yourself.

It probably has an effect on 97% of the population. So it is worth doing. For the superbrainies like you, a simple explanation should suffice.

I'm not denying that fact, Gnomon. But is it fair to everyone to deny them the courtesy of a rational explanation? And what about all the kids at both assemblies, sitting in the back rows, talking to their friends and reading and playing video games? I still don't think that my school's program was at all the best way to go about this.

The world is one big bell curve. The kids above the median don't need this stuff, won't react to it, will yawn and play video games. Reason will work for them - presumably. But half the world is below the median. And scare tactics work. So while it may trivialise the issue to the above-average, it is accomplishing something with the below. Different strokes for... blah blah.

Of course, they should have included something rational. Studies show that the best persuasion tactic is emotional bolstered by reason. So besides the melodrama, you're right, there should have been something intellectual.

I don't think we ever had a 'don't drink and drive' thing at school.

Then again, every year since I've been growing up, there have been the infamous Xmas Drink Drive adverts on the TV, each more shocking than the last. Now, drink-drive adds are regularly on TV.

Of course, at my school, the 'offical warning' type things were never paid any attention to. It is difficult to listen to a policeman warning you against rhe dangers of substance abuse when he stinks of beer and has a packet of Malboros in his top pocket!

Personally, I prefer the rational approch, but it is true that explaining things clearly and conisly will be ignored by the vast majority of students.

Smoking kills, no doubt, but look at how many kids smoke.

The problem is that untill somebody their age is involved, the average kid doesn't belive they will die untill they are old and grey. That is why kids smoke, that is why young people drive fast, because they will not die young. Death is for older people.

If the only way to put the message across is using shocking images and emotions, then so be it.

Personally the way you described 'the show' it looked liek they didn't put enough effort into actually organising how it was going to received. Also, it was a bit overblown. Put, I guess that the police, fireservice and ambulance would prefer to be doing that than cutting a pram out from between a tree and the grill of a chevy caviler containing three dead and intoxicated teens

" As I remarked to my friends, what if there had been a real emergency, but the entire fire department was in the school parking lot?"

They do have enough fire engines to go round usually.

This sounds much like the adverts they have here, which show kids getting violently smashed into by cars, getting smashed across pubs as if they were in cars, the lives kids could have had if they'd been allowed to live, and worst of all, a little girl all smashed up and twisted who then drags backwards across the road and all her limbs untwist.

They wouldn't use these tactics if they didn't work, but frankly I think that they need to make it law to have these ads in pubs, and played on the tv sets in between the sport and MTV.

I had a friend (who doesn't these days!) who was killed outright by a drunk driver. She had no chance - because she's short she always had to sit very close the the windscreen, and those crappy roller seatbelts let you fly forward too much to save short people's lives.

Get rid of pub car parks. Improve public transport in areas like my town that has no buses into the evenings, so that there is a better option than driving while drunk.

It's a shame you weren't interested in what your school was trying to do, I only wish schools here did the same thing.

They obviously wanted to provoke a Drink/Driving debate and they seem to have succeeded. That must be good. It sometimes takes a bit of theatre to get people thinking.

With me, I think that I wouldn't drink and drive simply because it's been impressed in me that it's wrong- like 'stealing is wrong' or 'you shouldn't take sweets from strangers'. Logically I wouldn't do it either, but I have an instinctive, knee-jerk reaction to it that is likely to be more useful in an excessive drunk situation.

That being said, I always listened to what my parents and teachers told me. Not everyone does that.

>>Get rid of pub car parks

A pub near me has a 30+ space car park.

It is always full.

Now, given that I live the a city with one of the best public transport systems inthe country, I have no idea why this place has a car park.

Actually, sicne they charge about £3 a pint (the place over the road is about £1.50), perhaps people don't drink much.

Hmm.

I've encountered several situations where drinking and driving has been regarded as more-or-less socially acceptable:
- When I lived in Ottawa and the done thing was to drive over from Ontario to Quebec to maximise drinking time.
- When my brother and I were rounded on for refusing to give an uncle a lift home after a party
- Worst of all, when I spent an evening with the police. We had a 110mph motorway chase after a guy in a Jaguar. The police more or less told him "Well, it's just one of those things."

I'm in favour of anything that hammers home the message "This simply will not do."

Yes, this simply will not do. But for more children to pretend to be dead in the name of tragedy?

I still don't understand what made my school think that this program would be more successful than discussing the deaths of real children. There have certainly been enough to be getting on with - only a year ago, a student from my school was killed by a drunk driver while on his motorcycle. Why aren't we talking about him? Or about practical solutions, like designated drivers?

I just don't think that the school's approach was particularly rational - no more rational than they seem to think we are.

perhaps they were worried that if they talked about a local case it would upset the friends / relatives of the person killed