Edinburgh students see consequences of impaired driving during mock crash

The police and fire departments came together to give students a realistic look at the dangers of distracted and impaired driving ahead of prom weekend.

The scene looked and sounded like a real car crash. Firefighters were dressed in full gear, students wore makeup and fake blood to simulate fake wounds and injuries and two cars were placed meticulously to mimic a t-bone crash.

The mock fatal crash is as realistic as they can make it, said Doyne Little, Edinburgh police chief.

“It’s just to get the word out there that maybe it’s not this year that one of these students can save a life, maybe it’s two years down the road that they see an impaired driver and go ‘Hey, I remember this class. Trust me, you don’t want to see this,’” Little said.

Students from Edinburgh Community High School played victims of the crash while the police and fire departments demonstrated how they would handle it. One student lay on the hood of the car, pretending to have been ejected and was later pronounced deceased by paramedics. Four other students acted as critically injured patients while one student acted as the impaired driver.

Police officers and firefighters ran through the mock crash just as they would a real one, with their radio communications playing over a sound system for the students to listen in.

Actors pretending to be parents of the deceased students were also present to simulate the reaction of a parent losing their child.

Seeing the crash and it’s aftermath visually helps drive the point home for students, Little said.

“It’s something that police and fire see every day, but when they see the screaming parent come across and sit down next to their student who is deceased, that drives things home,” Little said.

The scene began with two Edinburgh officers being dispatched to a crash and arriving in the parking lot with their lights and sirens on. Firefighters and EMS arrived on the scene shortly after.

Firefighters and EMS triage the mock crash, assessing who is the most critical and asking dispatch to start medical transport via LifeLine over the sound system. As the scene progressed, firefighters began working on putting neck braces on each of the students, while police performed field sobriety tests on the mock suspected impaired driver.

Firefighters used hydraulic rescue tools, also known as the jaws of life, to take the top off of the car and get the students out. Each student pulled from the car was loaded into the ambulance and taken away from the scene with lights and sirens on.

Seniors Liza Henderson and Bailey Nelson were a part of the mock fatal accident. Nelson acted as the back right passenger posing with a broken femur and broken rib. A firefighter sat on the trunk of the car behind her to stabilize her neck until she was extracted. Nelson was nervous about the mock crash, but the firefighters used their training to reassure her it was going to be okay, just as they would during a real crash, she said.

The experience was eye-opening for her and she will definitely be thinking more realistically about crashes in the future, she said.

“They did really well, like clearly explaining what was going on so that we would calm down,” Nelson said. “They were checking on us every so often. They did a really good job.”

Henderson acted as the front passenger with an obvious facial laceration. She was extracted from the car, put on a backboard and strapped to the stretcher before being taken away in an ambulance. Her dad is a firefighter, but Henderson said she didn’t expect the amount of work that it would take to get them out of the car.

The biggest thing she learned was the importance of stabilizing the neck after a crash, she said.

“It’s so much work that you don’t realize. You would just think that they just pull you out of the car, but all the tools they use and everything, it’s a lot of work,” Henderson said.

Superintendent Ron Ross said he was appreciative the police and fire departments do this demonstration for students every two years. He hopes the mock crash will empower students to make good choices, especially as they get ready for prom this coming weekend.

“If we get through to hopefully all of them,” Ross said. “but if we get through to one, then it was worth it.”