Take Action Stop Distractions

How many students heard the message?
1960

Estimated percentage of your student body?
91-100%

Who has your project aimed to reach?

  • Freshman class
  • Sophomore class
  • Junior class
  • Senior class
  • School professionals
  • Community at large

Objective:
The objective of our project was to teach teenagers like ourselves the importance of saying no to distraction while in the car. New drivers often find themselves getting distracted easily which is very dangerous as they have not had enough practice on the road. Car accidents are too common for teenagers and cause a lot of fatalities every year, which we saw as a problem that we wanted to both address and help to fix. We hope that by making this PSA we are able to get our message out to many teenagers everywhere who are just beginning to drive and need to know the importance of saying no to distractions.

Target Audience:
Our target audience wasn’t just drivers -whether it be those driving for years or those preparing for their road test- but also pedestrians and bike riders. No matter what mode of transportation a person takes safety should always be their number one priority. So we mentioned distractions that could happen in and out of a car. If someone has music playing in a car, or playing through their headphones while walking, running, and riding their bikes, an accident can occur. By not limiting our audiences to drivers only, we hope to spread awareness and keep our community safe.

Execution:
The goal of our project was to spread awareness and to prevent distracted driving. We see distracted driving as a huge issue among teenagers because we are not yet quite familiar with all the rules of the road which means that we must be giving our undivided attention to the road while driving. This means that anything from loud music, to navigation, to our phones, and even food while driving can be distracting to the driver and possibly fatal to not only the driver, but to additional passengers. We wanted to spread this awareness to kids at our school as well as teenagers everywhere. Our original PSA would show the possible effects of saying yes to distractions in the car, but unfortunately we were unable to film it due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our PSA now is just as effective in getting the facts across just in a more direct way. We hope that our project and our pledge will actually inspire teens to take action to stop distractions.

Teamwork:
The CHS News class has a total of only five students, which is why it was important that we work well as a team, and has allowed us to become very close. While working on this campaign it was very important that we each take on our own responsibilities which every person would be accountable for. Some examples of this includes one person being in charge of ordering our merchandise, one in charge of getting in contact with local news sources, and someone else in charge of making our pledge to driving safely. We all worked together to spread the word of our campaign, and had fun doing it! It is that kind of teamwork which has led to the success of our group.

Use of Resources:
We were able to show our PSA on our schools morning news channel, as well as on a local television channel. Additionally, there will be an article published on our campaign in the June issue of a local magazine, and we played the PSA before previews at our local movies theater. We also spread the word through our social media pages, and had our guidance department to send out a text to the entire student body about our campaign, and make a post on each grade’s google classroom page. We also got students to sign a pledge that we created to say no to distracted driving. Finally, we created merchandise which we handed out to people with the jersey drives website on it to full spread the word.

Use of Media:
We made posts on our social media pages about the PSA asking for them to watch it and sign our pledge to say no to distracted driving. Our promo video was aired on local television channels, our school’s morning news channel, as well as being played before previews at our local movie theater. We are also having an article written about our campaign in the June issue of our local magazine, Matters Magazine.

Thoroughness:
A lot of research went into our project as a whole. We used reliable resources and quoted them in our videos to show the real facts about distracted teen driving. With all of this research we obviously saw the urgency of our campaign as this is a very serious issue that affects us all. We knew that just asking students to say no to distractions would not work as well, so we had them sign a pledge to promise to say no to distractions while driving.

Impact:
We asked students if they drove with more than one passenger, drove with loud music, etc. before and after watching our promo. Many kids who had said that they did drive with distractions in the car said that after watching the video they felt as though they needed this to change, as they could now see how potentially dangerous it was. Many teens did not know the affects of having distractions in the car, specifically the statistics about chances of crashing with every additional passenger. We believe that we opened the eyes of many students who will now say not to distractions in the car, making is safer for both them and us.

Sustainability:
We want to continue spreading our message past the competition because it truly is a big issue in our community. We will continue to stress the importance of saying no to distracted driving through posts on our social media pages, as well as through our school resources, like mass texts from the guidance department and the morning news channel. We hope to continue to make a difference in our community past what we have already done.

Unexpected Lessons Learned:
As a group of all juniors in high school, we are all just learning to drive and getting our licenses. What started as a lesson for our peers became a lesson to us as well. We realized the effects of distracted driving on all teens, including ourselves. It was important to us that we spread the message to everyone we could because otherwise we may be putting our peers or even ourselves in danger in the car. Not only did this campaign spread the message to students at our school, but it also taught us a lesson about safe driving.

Stipend Reporting:

  • We bought custom T-shirts, car magnets, stickers, and face masks with our logo on them: $658

Total: $658

MEDIA