The education community plays a major role in reaching school-aged students, from elementary school through college, with information on alcohol, impaired driving, and other traffic safety issues. Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for children and young adults in the United States and a perfect conduit for reaching children and youth with traffic safety messages is through schools and college campuses. School administrators, teachers, and students not only have the capability to influence the lives of the students within their institutions, but also the lives of the people within their communities. Consider the following ideas as you begin planning 3D Prevention Month and year-round events and make educators part of your Safe Community.

Ideas for 3D Prevention Month Activities:

• Work with emergency medical service (EMS) and medical personnel, local law enforcement, the local Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) chapter, the state highway safety office, and other safety organizations to conduct a mock crash. Supplement the mock crash by obtaining a safety belt convincer so students will have the opportunity to experience the benefits of safety belts.
• Sponsor a safety holiday ornament fund raising campaign for your community. Have a school contest to come up with a design for the ornament and an impaired driving holiday slogan to go on the ornament. Proceeds from the campaign can go to support school traffic safety programs.
• Coordinate with your local mall to support their "visit Santa" program. Student and adult volunteers can hand out buttons with an impaired driving message to parents and give stickers with a safety belt message to children.
• Invite a motivational speaker to talk to students about having a fun holiday season without alcohol. Or bring in an impaired driver that has killed or injured someone or a victim who was injured by an impaired driver during the month of December to talk about how their life has changed because of alcohol. A resource for locating a speaker is your local Remove Intoxicated Drivers (RID) or Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) chapter.

Year-Round Activities:

• Hold a summit on campus alcohol issues. Convene college and university presidents to discuss the problem of youth access to alcohol and develop solutions to reducing access and consumption. For more information on setting up a campus summit or campus programs, contact Drew Hunter at BACCHUS and GAMMA Peer Education Network, phone: (303) 871-0910, e-mail: dhunter@du.edu.
• Have school clubs and safety groups (drama club, varsity club, SADD, Future Homemakers of America, etc.) work together to organize a community program on alcohol and impaired driving awareness.
• Display the "Traffic Safety Box" (TSB) at your school. The TSB is an interactive, computerized traffic safety education program created for pre-drivers and drivers (middle school- and high school-aged students). The TSB uses familiar clips from feature films, colorful animation, and music to communicate and educate teenagers about driving, riding, and other traffic safety issues. For more information on how to obtain the TSB for your school, contact the SADD National Headquarters in Chatham, Massachusetts, phone: (508) 945-3122.

Successful Alcohol and Impaired Driving Program Lapeer County, Michigan, Takes a Stand
Community partners in Lapeer County made a difference by reducing alcohol-related crashes by 50 percent and decreasing youth alcohol use by almost 20 percent, and had no youth alcohol violations at parties and no youth alcohol-related fatalities during the 1995 graduation season.

Local alcohol use and crash data reflected a problem with the underage population. In order to make county residents (both adults and youth) more aware that alcohol use was on the rise and that young people were drinking, a steering committee was formed to guide a program effort called Alcohol in Schools Is Stupid (AISIS). The committee was made up of representatives from coalitions from each school district, which included law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, parents, clergy, school representatives, and community leaders.

The program approach was three-fold: it included law enforcement activities, educational presentations, and community activities.

Enforcement activities:

• Increased citations written for "minors in possession";
• Conducted alcohol stings; and
• Students from the high school SADD chapters worked with law enforcement in the stings to attempt to buy alcohol from local establishments.

Educational activities:

• Steering committee members were trained by recognized experts in alcohol related programs, community intervention, and parenting skills; and
• Steering committee members used their new gained knowledge to educate coalition members, youth, school faculty, and parents.

Community activities:

• A parent support group was initiated, offering a safe-home alternative for youth parties. A safe home phone directory was published in each school district listing parents who had pledged to hold chaperoned parties that were drug-, tobacco-, and alcohol-free.

The county received extensive media coverage, including feature articles on the alcohol stings and the school programs. The program has become part of the county's substance abuse agency, and is called the Any Illegal Substance Is Silly program.

For more information on this program, contact Deborah Savage, Michigan Office of Highway Safety Programs, 4000 Collins Road, P.O. Box 30633, Lansing, MI 48909-8133, phone: (517) 333-5324.