PDHS Students Experience DUI Crash First Hand

Over 400 Palm Desert High Students got an up-close look Tuesday at what a fatal drunken driving accident looks like as part of a DUI prevention program.  

The “Every 15 Minutes” program simulated a two-vehicle collision, with major injuries and a fatality.  Statistics show nationwide, a drunk driving death happens every 15 minutes. 

For many of the students, this was the first time they had seen a major auto accident from beginning to end. 

The simulation on Tuesday took place on the normally heavily traveled access road south of Aztec Field.  As students filled into the temporary bleachers, they saw a large tarp covering two collided vehicles in the roadway.  

“It’s as realistic as it gets, without it being the real thing,” Riverside County Fire spokesman Kevin McNally said. “We have live dispatch, our resources pull up at the scene, and we perform what we call a ‘live cut and rescue.’” 

The program began about 10:30 a.m. with the sounds of a crash over loudspeakers, as students removed the tarp to reveal a SUV that had collided with a small sedan; supposedly following a Palm Desert basketball game. 

A teenage passenger of the SUV had been partially ejected through the windshield and bloodied, while the sedan revealed four other teens bleeding while drifting in and out of consciousness. 

Students then heard a simulated 911 phone call, with a frantic student reporting the accident, and the calls from dispatch to first responder units. 

As the rescue units arrived (from their staging location at the other end of Palm Desert High) the crowd was able to hear the interactions between the rescue crews via microphones on some of the Riverside County Fire and Sheriff’s Department units. 

The chilling sights and sounds became even more realistic when the crowd heard rescuers calling in reports to dispatch of “one confirmed fatality, possibly two.”  

Local television reporters added an element of realism by interviewing actors portraying witnesses, while the rescues were going on. 

After two actors from the simulation “walked” from the scene for treatment, three others were taken away by ambulance. 

A fourth was wheeled on a stretcher to the nearby football field, as a CHP helicopter landed, showering the onlookers with freshly cut grass. The students were still brushing off the cuttings as the stretcher was loaded into the helicopter before it took off to the north. The arrival of a coroner’s van seemed to catch some off guard, as the fatality was placed on a gurney before being driven away. 

In the final moments of the simulation, the “driver” of the SUV was given a field sobriety test by the Sheriff’s department.  The “driver” failed the test and was arrested and taken away. 

As the police unit left the scene, the crowd was told that this was not an accident, but the result of a series of bad choices made by the characters involved in the simulation.  

Palm Desert senior Haylee Roscoe said the scenario hit home. 

“I see it’s really real, and I hear about it happening every day on the news … I know it [drunk driving fatalities] is real, and it’s really sad,” Roscoe said. 

McNally believes the program is an effective reminder of the dangers of drunk driving, not just for those in the vehicles, but to everyone involved. 

“I think it gives them a definite appreciation of what we do, what goes on out there and how difficult emotionally it is for those that are in public service,” he said.  “Also it does a lot for them [the students] as far as being aware to not to go out and drink and drive.” 

For Riverside County Fire and the other agencies involved, this was also a training exercise, being videotaped by photographers posing as members of the media.  The fire department will review the tapes later as part of their ongoing training.  

This was the opening of a two-day exercise for Palm Desert students, as an assembly on Wednesday will explain the choices the simulation’s characters made leading up to the fatal collision.