It’s not hard to be a little safer, said the president of Hammarskjold High School’s Smartrisk group.
Buckling your seatbelt only takes a couple of seconds; putting on a bike helmet takes two seconds, said Sam Budd at the school’s third annual Teens Experiencing Safety Tips (TEST) Thursday afternoon.
TEST has students trying different activities to see the effects of driving impaired or distracted, smoking and not wearing the proper safety gear when biking.
"Students need to see this because some of the things they do, they don’t realize are bad decisions," said Budd.
Some students tried a driving simulator where they had to either text while driving or wear goggles imitating the vision of an intoxicated person.
"It’s a good event for the students to understand the risks they take," Budd said. "It’s a fun way for them to learn about how to make safer decisions other than just through seminars."
Hammarskjold’s Smartrisk group ran TEST with the help of the Thunder Bay District Health Unit and public health nurse Marita Campbell said the school group has a strong dedication to spreading the message of injury prevention.
Campbell manned a station showing the effects of smoking with a pair of pig lungs. One pair was healthy and the other depicted what the lungs would look like if a person smoked a pack a day for 20 years.
"They can actually see and feel what emphysema would be like in their lungs and if they have a tumor, what that actually does," Campbell said. "They can see and tangibly feel the damage that’s done to your lungs when smoking."
