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Road safety lessons
at the Levee
By Shelly Whitehead
Post staff reporter
The small white sedan rolled over and over,
violently flinging the stuffed cloth dummies inside out every
window.
It had an immediate impact on the crowd of observers
at Newport on the Levee Friday:
The tough-talking pre-teen boy was suddenly rendered
speechless, Two little girls shrieked. And their mom just stood
motionless, with a furrowed worried brow.
"This is meant to show you why you have to wear
your seat belt every time you're in the car," Kentucky Division
of Driver Safety Program Coordinator Doug Mitchell told the crowd
gathered to watch the automobile roll-over demonstration at the
first Northern Kentucky Highway Safety Fair Friday in Newport.
"Without a seatbelt in a roll-over, if being
ejected from the car doesn't kill you, you can see that having the
car then roll on top you probably will. -- Wear your seat
belt."
Seeing is believing. That age-old notion was
both the running theme and the driving force behind the Northern
Kentucky Area Development District's decision to host the region's
first highway safety fair. The organization's highway safety
liaison, Casey Grady, said he launched the effort because he wanted
to bring all the "hands-on" experiential auto safety tools
and demonstrations together in one, high-traffic venue.
Lunch-time Friday at Newport on the Levee
filled that bill perfectly. Grady assembled an impressive assortment
of machinery and people, including the Kentucky Transportation
Cabinet's roll-over simulator, as well as the Kentucky Crime
Prevention Council's drunken-driving simulator, lots of free safety
coloring books and games, the all-female Team Huff dragster racing
squad and their hot rods, and the No Zone tractor-trailer blind spot
demonstration.
"This is about public education, plain and
simple," Grady said. "One of the things I've been most
surprised with, with this job, is just how many things are going on
to make the roads safer. So I wanted to bring them all together for
one event. We're hoping to make some noise here. You know, we'll get
the smell of the hot dogs on the grill going and then just attract
everybody who walks by to come in and check us out."
In a stroke of marketing genius, Casey placed the
sleek black dragsters of the all-female drag-racers, Team Huff
Racing of Independence, at the entrance to the fair.
It served as a magnet to those entering the
levee complex, stopping them in their tracks and getting them
talking and thinking about driving, riding and even peddling safely.
Parents Pam and Mike Huff, have six daughters between the ages of 11
and 21. Four are dragster racers and two are waiting in the wings.
All of them are well-versed in road safety, on the track and
off.
"Even though this seems like a dangerous sport,
we want them to know we take a lot of safety precautions," said
Courtney Huff, who at 21, drives the team's fastest dragster which
reaches speeds of 185 mph.
"We tell them that on the street you also have
to follow the proper procedures to keep you safe. The little kids
are very receptive to it. They think it's neat because it's not just
their moms saying, 'Wear your seat belts,' or 'Wear your bike
helmets."
Courtney and her sisters successfully drew
Chicago residents, Julie and Gary Gunderson, into the fair with
their three children. The eldest Gunderson child, Brad, is just 13
years old. But his father wanted him to get some firsthand
experience with the fatal vision goggles, which simulate varying
degrees of intoxication.
Typically, the goggles are used by teen-agers who
drive or ride in the drunk-driving simulator that Kentucky Crime
Prevention Council Program Coordinator Randy Yeley takes to high
schools across the commonwealth.
But at the safety fair, participants like Brad
Gunderson, just tried walking a straight line while wearing the
goggles. "When a policeman stops you, this is what he would do
if he thinks you're driving drunk," Yeley told Brad,
instructing him to walk along a seam in the concrete.
As the teen wobbled and teetered off the seam, his
father drove the early lesson home:
"Do you understand? Does this prove
something to you about what happens when you're drinking and
driving?" Gunderson asked his son, who then admitted it was
"not too safe" and that he couldn't "even see where
he was putting his foot."
The adults who tried the goggles were equally
impressed.
Yeley, a recently retired Covington police officer,
walked a Cincinnati woman through the standard field sobriety test.
She was amazed at her lack of motor skills.
"Are those my feet?" she asked as she
tilted and staggered across the line in the goggles. "Oh, for
crying out loud! I don't think -- I hope I've never been this
drunk."
Grady, who was named the development
district's transportation planner earlier this week, hopes his
agency will continue to offer the regional fair, though he will no
longer coordinate the project in his new job.
But he will continue to work to improve highway
safety as part of a newly formed committee that will use the state's
vast and detailed array of crash data to identify and remedy the
factors contributing to so-called "run-off-the-road"
collisions. He will also work with state data to pinpoint high crash
areas and causes in Northern Kentucky.
Regardless of the environmental factors, Grady says
drivers and passengers must always do their part to enhance safety
by wearing seat belts, using child safety restraints and never
driving impaired.
Publication Date: 06-26-2004
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