Start Smart: Necessary but Hard to Watch

As a part of SDA’s prerequisite to use the two student parking lots, students, accompanied by their parents, must attend a two-hour PowerPoint presentation by a California Highway Patrol officer in the Start Smart program.

The reputation of the presentation is quite notorious for its excessively violent and gratuitous nature i.e., videos of broken backs, amputated arms, detached faces, etc. The CHP officer will intermittently crack a joke to remind the audience that they are still in the land of the living, despite having witnessed so much death.

The CHP’s message is quite evident after only a couple of images: better safe than sorry. The majority of the introduction is dedicated to statistics and percentages about teen mortality behind the wheel. Following that, the presentation gradually exposes increasingly graphic videos including the film “Red Asphalt V”.

In any other case of seeing such mortifying images, the intent of witnessing them would be perceived as malicious or unnecessary. But, the district’s motivations are far from that; in fact, they are the exact opposite.

It’s clear that the hope is for students, and maybe even parents, to not make the mistakes that the drivers depicted in the program did. Or, maybe that the audience would become better drivers after discovering the horrifying fate of those who fail to understand the road.

The question is to what extent the program should reveal potentially scarring images in order to make safer drivers or how successful is the program at reducing vehicular collisions.

“It’s interesting how we use fear as a motivator to good behavior,” said one parent just after finishing the program. “Are there any other ways of educating our children instead of bombarding us with imagery that is violent and invasive and extremely troubling?”

The district has shown no sign of stopping the program and no significant complaint has been organized by the student or parent body. This could be because the audience recognizes the district’s intentions as more amiable than hostile.

A couple of parents felt the need to embrace their children upon finishing the program and some could be heard repeating the points the CHP officers emphasized. So maybe it’s that the majority of students, parents, and school staff feel that the program is a necessary evil. That it presents a reasonable balance between scare tactics and legitimate educational value.

It’s also good to know that there are five of those “Red Asphalt” films dating all the way back to the sixties. If they made it this far, it’s likely that they, along with the Start Smart program, are here to stay.