Staples students navigated a simulated car, while holding a phone, to experience the dangers of texting and driving. 

The Save A Life Tour Distracted Driving Prevention Program visits various high schools around Connecticut. The program offers a driving simulator with a video game like steering wheel, driver’s seat and a real life phone. It replicates the difficulty of trying to text while you drive.

“We’re showing people what it’s like to drive a car safely, driving confidently, and driving distracted,” Christopher Rich, the representative from Save A Life Tour, said.

The driving simulator has a gas pedal and a break pedal. Once you sit down, you are given a phone that’s locked on iMessaging where you receive automated text messages. Your task is to respond to the texts as you use the steering wheel to navigate on the roads and highways portrayed on the screen in front of you.

A Save A Life Tour flyer hangs on the walls of Staples high School. 

Students who tested the simulation reflect on the experience.

“It teaches that texting while driving is very difficult,” Phoebe Deoreo ’24 said. “You should never risk it because you’re putting other people’s lives, including your own, in danger. It definitely enforced the idea in my head.”

Rich and the Save A Life Tour travel to numerous high schools and colleges to demonstrate the repercussions of distracted driving.

According to the official website, “The Save A Life Tour has traveled around the world to show firsthand the deadly consequences of unsafe driving practices and choices. This program has been presented to students at over 1,500 different colleges and universities and over 600 different high schools across the country.”

Rich mentioned how the simulation is also designed to portray the dangers of drinking and driving to simulation participants.

“We do have an impaired sim; there’s a delayed reaction in the impaired sim, so it kind of correlates to someone drinking and driving,” Rich said. 

In correlation, according to Drive Safe Online, “Texting while driving has the same effect on your driving reaction time as if you had consumed four beers in a single hour.” 

In all, the Save A Life Tour simulation was created to demonstrate the dangers of driving distracted in any form. It is to remind people that it can be fatal. 

According to the United States Driving of Transportation, “In 2020, 3,142 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers.”