San Benito High School juniors and seniors should have learned
one of the most important lessons of their academic careers, if not
their lives, this week as the Every 15 Minutes program brought a
grim reality to the classroom Tuesday and Wednesday. The lesson:
Every 15 Minutes someone in the U.S. dies in an alcohol-related
traffic accident.
San Benito High School juniors and seniors should have learned one of the most important lessons of their academic careers, if not their lives, this week as the Every 15 Minutes program brought a grim reality to the classroom Tuesday and Wednesday. The lesson: Every 15 Minutes someone in the U.S. dies in an alcohol-related traffic accident.
Twisted metal, body bags and the eerie silence of death greeted students Tuesday morning as the school welcomed the Grim Reaper to its hallowed halls. Though every student knew the simulated accident and mock funeral that comprised the Every 15 Minutes program popularized at schools throughout the country weren’t real, they should have walked away understanding one bad choice could easily make the horrific display played out before them a frightening reality.
On Tuesday, students witnessed a mock accident that killed several of their classmates and ended in the arrest of another for drunk driving. Wednesday morning the school mourned their fallen classmates at funeral. The somber look on students’ faces during the funeral said it all as many in the crowd dried their tears.
The program bears significant importance in San Benito County where senseless teen tragedies from drinking behind the wheel seem all too common.
Earlier this year a SBHS graduate, 20-year-old Adam Baxter, died when his friend Matthew Engwall drove his vehicle into a ditch on Highway 156 while intoxicated. Yesterday, Engwall accepted a plea bargain for vehicular manslaughter, driving under the influence causing injury and driving with a blood alcohol level above .20. He now faces a maximum sentence of four years and eight months in jail. It’s a tragic and senseless turn of events in the lives of two young men – one whose life was ended so early and the other who must forever live in regret.
In 2003 Paul Galvan and Matthew Lopez died in a drunk-driving accident just months after graduating from San Benito High.
And those are but two of the more-recent accidents still haunting San Benito’s tragic history of lost young lives.
The program pulls no punches when confronting the frightening epidemic of teen drinking and driving. It shouldn’t. The statistics behind the problem are all too shocking – motor vehicle accidents remain the single greatest cause of death in 15- to 20-year-olds and alcohol-related accidents account for 41 percent of all traffic fatalities according, to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Perhaps the most effective element of the hard-hitting program is the focus it places on the people who survive these accidents – the people like Engwall left to live with their guilt and crimes, the parents grieving over a lost son, the people floating in the wake of destructive behavior.
We urge everyone who has a young person in their lives to talk to them. Warn them about the dangers of drinking and driving. Remind them that they are mortal and that one bad decision can have consequences that last a lifetime. Tell them that they don’t have to become one of the people who die every 15 minutes. Tell them to choose to live.
