PEABODY — Bishop Fenwick High School conducted a mock motor-vehicle crash, an educational exercise to teach students about the dangers of impaired and distracted driving, in cooperation with the Police and Fire departments, EMTs, Todisco Towing, and Conway Cahill-Brodeur Funeral Home on Thursday.
School President Tom Nunan said it was the first time in many years that Bishop Fenwick has hosted the presentation.
Students attended an introductory briefing at the auditorium about what to expect when they walk out of the building to see the mock crash. Sgt. James Harkins, the traffic/special operations supervisor for the Police Department, talked about the statistics of impaired-driving deaths.
“In 2022, nationwide, there have been 13,522 deaths related to alcohol-impaired driving,” Harkins said.
He added that the figure is equivalent to 260 deaths per week, or one plane crash per week.
Harkins also referenced past incidents, such as a boating accident in Cape Cod that resulted in deaths and led to a 19-year-old man’s arraignment last year.
“Drunk boating is the same thing,” Harkins said.
Principal Chris Canniff and Nunan both acknowledged how the mock crash was timely.
“We just want to make sure that students are safe,” Nunan said. “That means being alert and aware and smart and sober, and with senior prom in May, we just want to do everything we can to help these students understand how quickly their lives can change and the lives of their loved ones can change, and we just hope this will help them make good, smart, and healthy decisions.”
As soon as students left the auditorium to go outside, the graphic and realistic mock car crash started with a scene of two cars involved in a head-on collision, one student acting as someone who was ejected from a car, a few students and adults acting as injured victims in both cars, and a student acting as the alcohol-impaired driver crying for help.
The Police and Fire departments and EMTs arrived, then crews worked to extract people from cars. A crew member assessed that the person who was ejected had died and put a white sheet over her body.
A police officer also showed the audience the details of the field sobriety test and arrested the driver. A hearse arrived to take the body of the woman who died, with a woman acting as the victim’s mom crying, pleading to be able to see her daughter one last time.
A debriefing back at the auditorium followed, at which Harkins said that he saw some people in tears and encouraged the audience to imagine how much more magnified the emotions would be if the crash happened in real life.
Harkins also clarified that impaired driving does not only involve alcohol, but drugs as well.
“The excuse of ‘I have a prescription’ is not a justification,” Harkins said. “I’m tired of hearing, ‘Oh, it’s legal,’ when it comes to marijuana.”
Harkins also talked about distracted driving, which includes texting, eating, and talking to passengers while driving, and having pets sit on drivers’ laps.
Nunan called the presentation “impactful and powerful” and said that the school hopes to do something similar every two years.
