TMA Bucks in honor of National Teen Driver Safety Week is once again challenging Bucks County high school student drivers to buckle their seatbelts.
The 8th Annual Bucks County High School Seatbelt Safety Challenge has encouraged participating high schools to raise their student driver seatbelt usage over the course of the year as a result of recent surveys.
Advertisements
Surveys were conducted without the knowledge of the student body or administration at every public and private high school in Bucks. Each school’s result of seatbelt usage is being forwarded to the administration along with an invitation to participate in the challenge.
Among participating high schools, various student groups at each school will work to actively promote seatbelt use within the student body using posters, t-shirts, school-wide announcements and other creative messages throughout the year.
This spring, a follow-up survey will then be conducted and the school with the highest overall percentage in seatbelt use and the school with the greatest percentage increase in seatbelt use are both awarded with perpetual trophy plaques and $500 cash grants for safety-related use by the school.
Advertisements
“While the program has been extremely successful there is still a tremendous need in Bucks County for the important message of ‘seatbelts save lives’ to be shared with our teenage drivers,” said TMA Bucks executive director Bill Brady. “Last school year for the first time ever the combined seatbelt usage for all participating high schools after follow up surveys in the spring was an impressive 90 percent. It was only 65 percent eight years ago when we started the challenge so we are making incredible strides through this initiative.”
Back again this year as part of the initiative is the Teen Driver Safety Video PSA Challenge powered by Comcast. As part of the Seatbelt Challenge all Bucks high schools will have the opportunity to produce and submit a 30-second video PSA on teen driver safety. It can deal with any aspect of safe driving including seatbelts, texting, distracted driving, speeding, etc. The school selected as the winner will get a $500 cash grant and their video will play on Comcast networking. Videos must be uploaded to YouTube with the link emailed to dave@bctma.com by April 1, 2015 to be eligible to win.
Advertisements
Last year’s challenge saw 19 high schools compete. Central Bucks High School East had the highest overall seatbelt use (96 percent) while William Tennent High School achieved the greatest percentage increase their score by 12 percent in seatbelt usage from baseline surveys. Central Bucks High School West was voted the winner of the Teen Driver Safety Video PSA Challenge portion of the contest.
“TMA Bucks has worked hard to keep local kids safe when behind the wheel and make them aware of the dangers on the roads,” added Walker. “Video has become an important part of getting many messages to a lot of different people, but it is especially effective in reaching our youth. Their creativity on an important message was amazing last year and we are looking forward to what they have to tell us this time around.”
To find out more information about TMA Bucks, please click here.
