HILLSBOROUGH: Simulated DWI deaths sober students

On eve of prom, a fatal accident’s repercussions are replicated

By Andrew Corselli, Staff Writer
   Every 900 seconds.
   That was the idea behind Regina Santangelo’s brainchild, the Every 15 Minutes program. Every 15 minutes, somebody dies from an alcohol-related automobile accident.
   After seeing a story on the news about a couple who brought a driving simulator to their local high school after their child had died in a car accident, Regina’s interest was sparked and she was determined to bring one to Hillsborough.
   As part of her Gold Award project for the Girl Scouts, Regina got in touch with Terry Hoben from NorthStar Air Medical Rescue and he told her about his Every 15 Minutes program. The HHS junior embraced the idea and decided to try to bring it to her school. With the help of many volunteers and donators, the State Police, and Hillsborough police, rescue squad and fire companies, she was able to make it a reality.
   ”We’ve been working really hard and it (came to fruition) last week,” she said.
   Last Thursday, the program pulled pre-selected students out of class every 15 minutes and brought them to the office, where the child had his or her face painted white and was sent back to class. These 23 students represented the “living dead students” and signified the people who die every 15 minutes from drunk-driving accidents, Regina said.
   Towards the end of the day, Regina said, the school had a simulated drunk-driving accident with four students. The kids were placed at the scene of a staged crash before the whole senior class came out and watched their classmates being taken out of the vehicle and rushed to the hospital. After that, the driver was sentenced in a fictitious court case. All of the day’s events were taped.
   The living dead students then spent the night at the school, sleeping in the library, to “represent how it would feel to their friends and family if they were lost in an accident.” The students also wrote letters to their parents that started with ‘I died yesterday in a drinking and driving accident and I always wanted to tell you…” while the parents wrote similar letters to their children, Regina said.
   ”The next morning, we all got up and had our breakfast, and in periods two and three we had a memorial service,” she said. “Some of (the letters) were read out loud at the memorial service, and we had all the videos shown to the senior class to wrap it up.”
   The program took 10 months to put together but was well worth it. According to Regina, “I’ve heard one student already say ‘I didn’t party with my friends this weekend (prom weekend) because of the program. I didn’t want that to happen to me.’”