ALLEN COUNTY, OH (WLIO) - A group of local high schools joined together today to learn about the dangers of distracted driving.
The Safe Community Coalition brought in students from Allen East, Bath, Lima Central Catholic, Delphos St. John's, Lima Senior, and Perry High Schools to deliver a message about safe driving and putting down their phones when they're behind the wheel. The students got to talk to first responders and learn about the aspects of auto crashes and how they can be part of the effort to help curb distracted driving.
"Every single person, we've all been affected through some type of distracted driving. You know whether it's the more serious things or even something smaller. And ultimately we just want to make sure that our kids and everybody in general makes it home and makes it where they're supposed to be going every single day," stated Jesse Kill, principal of Perry High School.
"If you look at the overall causes of accidents in Ohio, or in Allen County I should say, a large percentage of them are youth related. So doing this outreach to our young generation who are on their cell phones, they've really only ever known cell phones, it's really important that we impart to them the devastation that having a cell phone can cause in the car," stated Shaunna Basinger, public outreach planner of Lima Allen County Regional Planning Commission.
"We are encouraging text less, live more which is a project we do so that people can text less and actually get out and live their lives. As well as showing people like, if you put your phone down so there's so much more things you can do and that one text, it can wait until you're not driving anymore," commented Teagan Helmig, a junior at LCC and SADD Ohio National representative.
SADD or Students Against Destructive Decisions also helped put on the assembly and Allen County actually boasts the largest number of SADD groups in the entire state of Ohio.
