A graphic program showing the physical and emotional consequences of traffic crashes would be offered in public high schools statewide as part of a new partnership of trauma specialists and highway safety advocates.
The University of Maryland Shock-Trauma Center and the Maryland Highway Safety Foundation will announce their joint effort tonight at Gilman School before a presentation of the driver safety program.
The partnership is aiming to expand a program that Shock Trauma has been offering at private schools to the state's public school systems.
The effort combines the expertise of Shock Trauma with the financial muscle of the foundation, which has attracted support from some of the state's most influential business leaders.
David Nevins, co-chairman of the foundation, said the group will raise money, provide marketing support and help Shock-Trauma deal with local school authorities.
Nevins said he has seen the program and believes it will be effective in delivering a message on safe driving to teenagers.
"It's incredibly moving," he said. "We don't use actors. In the videos you see the saddest of stories."
Andy Billig, a Shock-Trauma board member, said he became aware of the program three years ago when he accompanied his teenage son and daughter to Shock Trauma for a presentation. He was so affected by the program that he has since been working to expand its reach.
"It's a very powerful program. It not only shows the kids the risks of drinking and driving, texting and driving, playing road games and poor decisions, but the consequences to themselves and the collateral damage that's done in the process," said Billig, a co-owner of the A. J. Billig & Co. auction house.
Among other things, Billig said, the program shows how parents are affected when a young person is so disabled by a crash that he has to spend the rest of his life using a diaper.
"It's very graphic and very jolting, to say the least," Billig said.
The program includes presentations by two Shock Trauma nurses and a young motorist who survived a 65 mph crash on Falls Road with extensive injuries, he said.
Billig said the partnership came about after he pitched the idea to Fred Mirmiran, a fellow Shock Trauma board member and founding chairman of the foundation.
Mirmiran, president of the engineering firm Johnson Mirmiran & Thompson, said that as a board member he had learned that out of about 7,500 patients Shock-Trauma treats each year, about 3,300 are injured in traffic crashes.
Expanding the program to public school will involve cutting through a lot of red tape, Mirmiran said. But he added that the school superintendents of four local jurisdictions - Baltimore city and Baltimore, Carroll and Howard counties - had accepted invitations to the presentation at Gilman.
Mirmiran also said the foundation will announce two other partnerships - one with the Motor Vehicle Administration and the other with Stevenson University - to promote defensive driving education.
The foundation will also lay out its goals for the 2010 General Assembly session. Mirmiran said the group, which lobbied heavily for the texting-while-driving ban adopted this year, will seek to remove an exception permitting drivers to read taxt messages while driving. He said the group will also push for mandatory installation of an ignition interlock device, which prevents a vehicle from starting if it detects the presence of alcohol, for anyone convicted of drunk driving.
