Crash Site Assignment Due 7/29

1. Watch the " Crash Cd ". Type 3 writing. FCA's: 1. give a complete summary of the four sites you visit in the cd( lawyer, police, doctor, school), 2.Tell who you turned out to be in the cd, 3.Give your view on the problems related to drinking/drugs and driving. Please post this by Sunday 7/29, 3:00 pm. If completed correctly this paper will take the place of your final exam.

The Lawyer had a lot to say and show about the costs of things when you get into a crash. You had to do an activity where you estimated the costs of things like, towing, restricted license fee, alcohol education programs, court costs and so on. After seeing what the 10 things you had to estimate the costs of really cost, I realized how much it was. Those 10 things all together cost over $14,000.

The police told a lot of statistics. They said that when teens are driving they are twice as likely to get into a crash with teen passengers. They also showed what to look for in drunk drivers. You should look for slow responding, lights off, turning abruptly, drifting, following too closely, weaving, swerving and wide turns. Also they explained how when you get pulled over for drunk driving there is no tolerance, even if the alcohol level is .01 or .02 you will still get arrested for DUI. They showed a small diagram or the process of getting arrested as well. The process was: get pulled over, field sobriety test, Miranda rights, breathalyzer, pay bail, arraignment, then a trial.

The doctor had a lot to say about head injuries, the brain, a little about drinking, pot and seat belts. A couple of facts that were stated were that seatbelts reduce the risk of dying in a crash by 60%, after drinking it only takes 10 minutes to start taking effect, and even if you get into a collision at 10mph, it can still cause significant damage if you hit your head. If you have a head injury you can forgot things, can't concentrate as well, have mood swings, lose taste and smell or have difficulty with motor skills. It depends on what part of the brain was effected. These are parts of the brain that can be effected if you drink, frontal lobe (makes you make bad decisions), hippocampus (memory fails), and medulla (can cause brain damage). If you smoke pot, these are the parts of your brain that can be effected, limbic system (missing danger skills), hippocampus (memory loss, reduced attention), and the cerebellum (bad coordination or road tracking).

The school talked a lot about how impaired drivers, victims and the victims friends and family can be effected and how to deal with someone who is about to drink and drive. There were short videos from an impaired driver, a victim and a victims family. Jeff, the impaired driver, talked about the accident and how horrible he felt for what he had caused and was convicted with negligent homicide. Sara, a victim, was hit by an impaired driver and suffered a lot of serious injuries that she still has to live with and remembers. Marilyn and Mike, a victims parents, talked about how hard it is to live with the death of their daughter after she was killed by an impaired driver. This section also told about how to deal with friends who wanted to drive somewhere under the influence. You could, take their keys, find someone else to drive them home, delay them until they're sober enough to make better decisions, use another angle (use other words, rephrase what you said before), or you could just let them go although that's not a good idea.

In the story I was the passenger in the car. In the car no one was wearing a seat belt, the passenger was ejected from the car, suffered memory loss, the driver was drunk, the passenger should have done something to stop the driver from driving, the driver was convicted of vehicular homicide and the biker that the car hit was killed.

My views on drinking and driving are that it's never ok. I think that if you do drink and drive, but you didn't get pulled over or get into an accident then you're extremely lucky. It doesn't seem worth it to me to drink or smoke pot then drive. You could kill someone then have to live with that for the rest of your life, or you could get arrested and have all of those consequences. It's easy to find someone else to drive you home or pick you up if you drink anyways, if it's that easy and there's a lot less risk, then you should do it instead of taking those chances.