Shattered Lives

This is one of my serious posting, so if you have anything negative to say, save it. Also, not for the lighthearted
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This posting was inspired by this article
http://articles.mibba.com/Biographies/1506/Sarah-Panzau-Living-Proof

- Traffic crashes are the number one killer of teens and over one-third of teen traffic deaths are alcohol-related.

- Texas is the state with the second most drunk driving deaths of any state, having been edged out of first place by California.

- In 2004 there were 16,694 fatalities in alcohol-related crashes in the U.S.

- NHTSA estimates that alcohol was involved in 39 percent of fatal crashes and in 7 percent of all crashes in 2004. In 2004, 21 percent of the children age 14 and younger who were killed in motor vehicle crashes were killed in
alcohol-related crashes. An estimated 248,000 people were injured in crashes where police reported that alcohol was present — an average of one person injured approximately every 2 minutes.

-Every 15 minutes, a teen dies in an alcohol-related accident.

Drinking, Drugs, Smoking, everyone does it, even if you haven't yet, you will possible do it once in your lifetime. But do you really know the consequences?

I lost a best friend to drunk driving 2 years ago, Jimmy White, he was a star baseball player, had a full ride at Texas A&M at College Station, even had a chance to play for the Astros as a first draft, meaning he would get playing time. But in april of my freshman year, there was a party and everyone there was drinking and doing drugs. Cops came and we all went out separate ways, next thing I hear, my best friend is on life support, another friend has a broken leg and the last was in critical condition and up for an arrest. Why? All because they were drunk, not wearing seatbelts, and hit a mailbox causing them to crash into a ditch, jimmy died almost instantly.

We have a program called shattered lives, presented before spring break,which is a drunk-driving scenario, where there's an huge well staged accident and many students "die" during the day to stage how many teenagers, not legal adults, but teenagers die or are injured from drunk driving. Students are dressed up as grim reapers, along with an EMT, that come to the classes, take the designated person, read of their obituary, and takes them away. They can't talk for the rest of the day, and their faces resemble that of a corpse. Not only that, but they post their obituary in the hallways, this goes on for two days, it's sad how many of us DIE or are INJURED a day just by making a stupid mistake. After they have pulled everyone, they can't come back to school, so it's really like they are dead. Then the next day, there is the accident, it's almost like it's real. There is a real call, performed by a student in the accident, that is sent through to the actual police, to where there they send off the signals, getting the ambulances, the police men, the fire department, everything. All juniors or seniors are pulled out of class, I was only a sophomore but I was in theater, and we help with the make up and stuff. There are REAL smashed up cars from real accidents, students stagged in places like they are in real accidents, EMTS, someone is life lifted, there are firemen using the jaws of life on one car. There are even people from a morgue to pull off someone who is supposedly "Dead at the Scene", parents have to go the hospital to identify their child. I had to go with my friends parents to identify him, he was one of the dead ones, and I cried, because it's depressing and sad, sure it wasn't real, and I was going to hang out with him that weekend, but it was heartbreaking to him THAT bloodied up and had cuts and scraps all over his body, he was so bloodied, it was almost to the point of you really couldn't recognize him. After we identified him, they put him in a body bad and drove him to the funeral home.. The people are driving are actually arrested and taken to jail and spends the night in the jail. We had a lady who was in an actually accident, come to speak to us also.My friend, the one that died, his mother spoke at the assembly and it was the most tear jerking expierence. It's a powerful thing, and it shows kids that they aren't invincible, that things CAN happen to them.

I don't care if you guys want to bitch and call me a hypocrite, if you have drunken before, I'm not going to tell you to stop, but just think about it, think about what you are doing with your life. If you don't drink, stay way from it, it can and most likely ruin your life.

Go to http://www.shatteredlives-tomball.org/ for more information(it's my school and you can watch the video from 2006 and also watch Concorida high school and also Montgomery videos)