DWI

It has been a busy couple of days, including a meeting this morning of the Lake County Suicide Prevention Task Force. It was a great meeting, productive. As my Chief Deputy and I pull together some of the notes, I’ll share them here on the blog.

Yesterday afternoon I participated in a neat program to try to prevent drunk driving and teen death. My participation was actually pre-program or early-program, but I hope I was of some help to these kids as they go forward with this program and that they can have an impact. As far as I know Cooper Middle School (Buffalo Grove) is the only school locally using this program. The program is called DWI, A simulation of teenage drinking, driving and the judicial process (by Kimberly Michaels). It is a role-playing simulation of the events surrounding the legal process that takes place after a “driving while intoxicated” youth driver, fatal car crash. My role was meeting with students who would be the Coroner, police and other actors in the simulation to discuss the actions of a Coroner in such a “case” in “real life”. We discussed the death investigation, post-mortem findings, court testimony and other facets a case like this might entail.

This seems to me a good teaching tool (different, interesting, and participatory) regarding the dangers of drunk driving, as well as regarding the Coroner’s and legal systems’ handling of these sorts of events. I also like that they are doing this with middle school students. I think that is a good time to go over these issues, before they or many of their friends are driving. Like many “lifestyle”/behavior issues it is best to go over them “early and often” to be able to really impact behavior.