LUMBERTON – About 100 teenagers in southeastern North Carolina got a crash course recently on the deadly consequences of drinking and driving during an exercise in Bladenboro.

The middle- and high-schoolers saw a mock crash scene that included a mangled car and rescue workers from several agencies, including the sheriff’s offices in Bladen and Robeson counties, the Bladen and Lumberton police departments, Lumberton and Bladen County Emergency Medical Service, and the N.C. Highway Patrol. Several of the teens slipped on goggles and tried to navigate a golf cart to simulate impaired driving.

On Thursday, members of the Robeson County Vision Zero Task Force received a presentation about the exercise held May 15 at New Light Church in Bladenboro. The event was part of the Keys to Life program, and it was presented by New Light Church and the N.C. Alcohol Law Enforcement Division.

“It’s wonderful to see so many of our teenagers get the real facts about how alcohol can severely impact their lives in ways they may not even imagined,” said Grady Hunt, the task force leader and a member of the N.C. Board of Transportation from Robeson County. “We have a problem with traffic deaths in our county.”

The Keys to Life, a program funded by the N.C. Governor’s Highway Safety Program, began in 2001 to raise awareness about the dangers of underage drinking among high-schoolers and those in college.

Nationally, vehicle crashes are the No. 1 cause of death for people between 15 and 24 years old, event sponsors told the task force, and alcohol is a leading factor in those crashes. And every 15 minutes in the United States, someone is killed or seriously injured in an alcohol-related crash.

Clergy outreach update

In other matters, the Rev. Ray Beale, associate pastor of The Gathering Church in Durham, told the task force that people are bombarded daily with various distractions, and they are experiencing grief in many ways because of the COVID pandemic, the ailing economy and mass shootings around the country.

“We believe grief is a distractor to safe driving,” said Beale, who is helping the task force by visiting churches in the county.

Beale encouraged people to mentor more youth, give hope to others who are lonely and practice “pausing and gathering their thoughts around grief and difficult emotions” before reaching for the car keys.

Hunt established the Robeson County Vision Zero Task Force in 2018 to promote driver safety and identify innovative ideas for improving highway safety. The task force members have their work cut out for them. A total of 69 people died last year in Robeson County crashes – a 30% increase from 2020.