Street Smart High Experience - Student Voice
Student voice, hear from one of Essington’s Senior College students.
Current Third Year (Year 12) student, Emma, recently attended the AANT'S Street Smart High experience, which focused on the importance of road and vehicle safety on NT roads.
Emma recounted how important this experience was for both herself and her peers, read what she had to say below:
This past Tuesday, the second and third year students from the senior college attended the AANT’s Street Smart High which focused on the importance on road and vehicle safety on Northern Territory roads. The event started with a re-enactment of a car crash, in which three teenagers driving home after a party unfortunately collided with a motorcyclist. Local paramedics and first responders provided a running commentary throughout the re-enactment, detailing the process and role of police, paramedics and firefighter at car crash scenes. It was a graphic and confronting depiction of the brutality caused by car crashes which reduced some of my friends to tears. What I realised throughout this stage is that it is easy to forget the impact of car crashes on first responders. They are the ones who have to remain professional and stoic in the face of such destruction and more often than not, relay the devastating news to families that their loved ones have died. I decided to ask my father, a police officer, if he had ever attended a scene like the one I had seen re-enacted after I finished school that day. He recounted to me how he had had to scrub brain matter and blood off his boots, sadly, more times than he could count after attending these harrowing and regular scenes on shift.
Additionally, students were reminded of the blameless tragedy caused by car crashes, as within the case of the motorcyclist within the staged scene. You could be driving along a road you know well, following the speed limit and completely sober- only to die as a consequence of someone else’s actions. In fact, within the Northern Territory you are 4 times more likely to die in a road crash than in any other state. It was a reminder that the responsibility of drivers was not an individual one and that making reckless decisions while driving did not just risk your own life, but the lives of your passengers, pedestrians, cyclists, bystanders and other people on the road. I can’t count how many times I’ve nearly been wiped off the road while driving.
The Street-Smart High event was a sobering and important experience for all year eleven and year twelve students, many of whom have just received their own provisional licenses. I would recommend it to any and all students planning to learn how to drive.
~Emma