‘Save a Life Tour’ comes to East Newton

A six-hour high impact alcohol awareness and anti-drinking and driving program will be featured at East Newton High School Tuesday.

The name of the event is “Save a Life Tour” and will encompass an all school assembly starting at 9 a.m. and then from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., juniors and seniors will have the opportunity for a simulator experience.

“It is an alcohol awareness program, we show the students first hand the mistakes that they will make with different levels of alcohol in their system,” said Frank Mitidieri, a representative with Kramer Entertainment who is bringing in the tour. “So instead of getting up on a pedestal and preaching to these students, we show them first-hand what is going to happen when driving a motor vehicle with alcohol in their system.”

The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), has chosen to do something about the problem that kills or injures more than 500,000 people each year: Drinking and driving.

And driving fatalities has hit close to home for the East Newton School District.

“When I wrote back to MoDOT, I mentioned that we had lost a number of students in traffic fatalities,” said Jeff Patterson, sponsor of Students Opposed to Drug Abuse (SODA) at East Newton High School. “Even though those fatalities were not alcohol related.”

The huge multi-media event features no holds barred video presentations coupled with a multi-million dollar drinking and driving simulation experience like nothing no one has ever seen. Even an actual casket is displayed to drive home the permanent reminder of the life changing impact of drinking and driving.

The assembly includes a 12-minute introductory video of the devastating effects of drinking and driving. The video will also show actual drinking and driving incidents, police response, emergency room scenes, uncensored family responses and screeching brakes, crying, screaming, sirens, flashing lights, blood and injuries.

“We will then have a presenter that will come out and tell his story,” Mitidieri said. “All of my presenters are in the age range of 22-26 years old. These guys have had alcohol touch their lives in a very, very negative way, depending on the presenter. One of which was a guy’s fiancée was killed by a drunk driver while he was on the phone with her. They know how to get to these students.”

From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., more than 200 juniors and seniors in the school will go through a impaired driver simulator, with 57 sensors in the seat to determine everything from the gender and weight of the student and adjusts to alcohol intake.

The presenter will point out the effects to spectators as they occur in each simulation. He will discuss the experience with each participant and reinforce their experience until he or she thoroughly understands how they were effected and why. Participants are not allowed to laugh, joke or make light of the Save a Life simulator or the program in any way.

According to a press release from Save a Life Tour, “This is a shocking, ‘in your face’ presentation of reality, addressing the very real and often fatal consequences of poor choices, and should not in any way be confused with a ‘video game.’”

 “The SODA club and myself wanted to give our students every tool, every opportunity,” said Patterson. “It gives our students just one more avenue of how this is what could happen if ‘I make that wrong decision. And at that moment of critical thinking if I choose to drink and drive, this is what could happen.’ …If we save one student or one patron or person, because we took kids through this, I think that is great.”

The Save A Life Tour has been endorsed by high schools and colleges all across the country and by the United States Navy, Marines, Air Force and Army, along with numerous insurance companies and hospitals nationwide.