PISCATAWAY — Who would have thought pee, puke and period are three words that could save someone’s life?
Cara Filler spoke about the tragic death of her identical twin sister, Mairin, the day after their 18th birthday, more than 16 years ago.
She told hundreds of students, parents and advisers during Good Driving for Life, the first statewide Teen Safe Driving Summit, held July 15 at Rutgers University’s Busch Campus Center in Piscataway, about how her sister died while her boyfriend was driving.
She said that if her sister had exercised better judgment, she might still be alive today. Thus, she encouraged students to “do the pee dance,” pretend they have to puke or tell a male driver that they have their period without the proper sanitary protection in order to have the driver pull over and let them out if they find themselves in a dangerous driving situation.
“Any lie that makes you safe is a good lie,” she said.
In the time it took Filler to deliver her 45-minute “Changing Attitudes, Saving Lives” presentation, she said 90 people around the world had died in a car accident.
She said that drinking, smoking and text messaging play huge roles in distracted driving, which can turn out to be fatal.
“Young people, I know living without risk would be boring … but there are risks in life you don’t need to take,” she said.
The Canadian native said that teens can play a role by taking the keys of anyone they believe to be impaired, or if they themselves are in an inopportune situation, they should call their parents, no matter how much trouble they may get in.
“I know sometimes when you’re in high school the last thing you want to do is call your parents … but there’s not a parent in this room that wants to get a knock on the door from a policeman [delivering news of a death],” she said.
Besides sharing details of coping with her sister’s death, she also told of students who have spoken to her after her presentations in five countries across the world.
She said one boy, Josh, lost his girlfriend when a car with five classmates crashed. Although 40 friends were at the same party, they let the girls leave anyway.
“Speed, alcohol and lack of seat belts are reasons those girls never made it home,” Filler recounted.
She also spoke of an EMT who brought morphine patches and other drugs to a 16th birthday party, and everyone chose what they wanted to try. The first boy who passed out was brought home, had his head shaved, was dressed up like a girl and had marker sketches all over his face. This is how his parents found him the next morning, not breathing.
“Choose to be involved. Choose to stick your neck out. Choose to say something,” Filler advised. “I live every day without [my sister.]”
After the keynote speech, the students in attendance separated into four teams to learn more about distracted driving, nighttime driving, the role that passengers play, and the importance of wearing seat belts.
Kayla Spiegeland, Emily Shapiro and Bryan Epstein from Freehold Township High School’s Students Against Destruc- tive Decisions (SADD) spoke about the dangers of cell phone use in the car.
To break the ice, they showed a clip from “Saturday Night Live” featuring Taylor Swift, in which she humorously claims teen driving is not so bad compared to adults, who drive while lecturing, revealing family secrets, making sarcastic comments about the car driving in front of them, and singing along to songs they don’t know.
However, statistics surrounding motor vehicle accidents are not so humorous, as 5,500 people were killed and almost a half-million were injured in accidents in 2009, 18 percent of which were caused by cell phones.
— Cara Filler Yet distracted driving also includes applying makeup, eating and drinking, looking at a navigation unit, and interacting with passengers.
To further prove this point, a video from a 2010 campaign sponsored by AT&T was shown. A senior set to graduate the next day crossed the median and struck a bridge, looking at a text from a boy she was about to meet, eventually leading to her death. A girl looking at a text from her sister clipped the median, flipped her truck and was ejected 300 feet, dying in a ditch. A young man reading a text from his girlfriend never saw the bicyclist in front of him, killing him instantly. A passenger in a vehicle was severely injured after the car he was riding in hit a tree; he was declared dead three times while still at the scene, and although he survived, he was left with lifechanging injuries.
Next, the students’ hands-on activity pitted one distracted and one non-distracted student against each other, challenging them to write the numbers 100 to 1 backward. The girl who was concentrating on her task completed it very quickly. On the other hand, the boy who was being asked several questions while on a cell phone could only get to the number 82 by the time the girl had finished. The point was that someone who is distracted cannot operate as efficiently as someone who has complete focus.
That same theme was prevalent during the nighttime driving presentation, led by Michelle Borrero and Nicole Gomes of Old Bridge High School.
According to New Jersey law, a graduated driver’s license prohibits new drivers from being on the road between 11:01 p.m. and 5 a.m. each night. This is because statistics show an increase in motor vehicle accidents between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. for drivers ages 15 to 18.
Late-night driving increases crash risk because new drivers have less practice in the dark, the influence of alcohol is more prevalent at night, and reaction times are delayed because drivers’ field of vision is smaller.
Several activities demonstrated this: students put up a piece of paper on the side of their face to check their peripheral vision, a ball was rolled across a table to show how different light settings affect vision, and photographs of a man in the road showed how a pedestrian is viewed under different sun levels.
Tips to help nighttime driving include keeping headlights clean, cleaning the inside and outside of windows, and practicing more at night.
For more information about Filler’s presentation, visit www.CaraFiller.com or visit her on Facebook.
For more information about the teen summit, email [email protected].
Contact Jennifer Amato at [email protected].