At mine, on that day, they started it by announcing over the intercom one morning that a popular classmate had been killed by a drunk driver on the way into school. Even though it should have been obvious that's not how it would really have been handled, it got the shock it was intended to get. A few people even ran out of classrooms crying. That was before everyone had cell phones.

I guess they wanted to make a point about the fatality rate statistic, too, though, so they kept going, announcing another person every however many minutes. It immediately became really obvious to everyone what was going on when they announced the second person. I think it lost more of its desired effect the more they continued.

In my school, one student was pronounced dead at the scene, one was taken by ambulance, and another was airlifted.

Every day, we would hear a car crash and heartbeat come up on the announcement system and then a grim reaper would walk into a classroom and tap a student on the should who "died" from drunk driving. They were taken to another room, where they put on makeup and a tombstone was placed for them in front of the school. At the end of the day, all the "dead" students would stand behind their tombstone. The "dead" would still attend class, but say nothing.

At the end of the week, there was a big presentation, where some people who survived a drunk driving accident spoke about their experience and statistics. He had suffered third-degree burns across his body and took off his shirt and walked around the auditorium, so that we could see the aftermath.

Fatal Choices was intense

We had to wear goggles that simulated being drunk like that one episode of the Simpsons and then try to do basic tasks like walk from one point to another or whatever so they could show how it impaired your motor skills. But it backfired because they just really exaggerate the visual impairment you get from drinking, they’re basically putting on a really too strong pair of glasses. But we did several rounds and eventually got somewhat used to it, it was a big game of who could seem the least impaired, the message was completely lost on us, etc

It is worth noting that this sort of thing was only done for a very brief period of time. It's not like this is how all American schools have warned students since 1978.

Still hilarious when you look back on it.

What

American, in the early 00s is when I got my license.

We never had that shit.

What we had was a school promoted driver's ed course. I think there was a video in the first week about drunk driving, but it was never this dramatic.

Then, we had road time. Lessons on the actual rules/laws of the road? Nah. Chuck a 15 year old into a car with a few other students, give the instructor a chicken brake, and figure it out. If you passed the school program, you didn't have to take a written or road test, you just got your license. Unless you had an accident, you passed.

I'll just say, that seems to explain a lot of the shitty drivers in my home town. Hell, my first time getting on the highway was coached by a friend of the same age as I did it for the first time. Didn't learn that in the drivers ed program, we just took side/back roads.

Also round-a-bouts didn't exist back then, in our area. They got real popular in the last couple years. No one seems to know how to use them. Yield? What the fuck does that mean?

My wife and I moved to another state a few months ago. I just gotta say driving was something I fucking loathed. In this new state? Well, I still don't like it, but honestly, its fine. So much better. People observe traffic signs/laws. It makes a big difference.

I work for a funeral home. We do a mock car crash every other year before homecoming.

The fire department gets two messed up cars and sets them up like they crashed, gets some students to play different roles, one was a drunk driver, some are unconscious, one is dead, one gets taken by helicopter by careflight. It's fun to participate in. Our role is to pull the hearse up and take the "body" away. No funeral.

When I was in high school they tried to do that, but couldn't get something important for it and instead had a student give a play-by-play over the PA of a drunk accident. Nobody paid attention because it happened between classes.

We had a day when they simulated a group of students being killed in a drunk driving accident. They still had to come to school, though, so they wore white face paint and weren't supposed to interact with anyone.

Where/when is this happening?

Note that even in Alberta we wrote "high school" the same as you'd write "primary school" or "secondary school", which suggests there was also spelling lessons.

They not only did this whole skit at my high school, they literally had a helicopter from the local hospital airlift the "injured" students off the football field where the assembly was held.

I was kinda jealous of my friend, who was one of the two kids who got to ride the chopper. I've never ridden in a chopper. 🥺

It’s been 5 years and his friend is still pretending to be dead.

Nah at my high school we just had kids die in drunk driving accidents every year, usually multiple. I'd say we didn't need a lot of theater around the topic, but well, then again...

In America they do that in between active shooter drills.

Yes, but it wasn't fake. Three students died playing drunk motorcycle chicken, two guys and one of them had their girlfriend on the back. The whole school was in mourning and I got written up for pointing out that they were clearly fucking idiots.

No. We were shown why you don't use water in an oil fire. Was a fun practical demo.

I had this at my highschool too. They even flew in a helicopter to take the "dead" students away. They also had a mock funeral and the "dead" students didn't have to attend school for the rest of the week and I'm pretty sure that they weren't allowed to use social media or communicate with anyone at school either.

In the UK we didn't even get driving lessons.

Our parents paid for us to learn to drive.

I still can't believe American schools teach kids to drive, given their........ attitude to other things. It's just weird.

I think they only did that once every 4 years at the school I went to. They didn't do any funeral stuff, just the crash scene part.

One year they had a student laying on the ground near a car and a firefighter accidentally stepped on her(thought she was one of the dummies?) and broke some of her ribs.

Didn't do shit to stop drunk driving, nor did the victims of drunk drivers that had their lives changed in the accidents.

Yup. Caused minor PTSD in the actors and I was one of them. A bunch of students still drove drunk though...

We had an assembly about drunk driving that had a mock scene with a car on the football field.

Then a guy gave a speech about him killing two people while drunk driving and how badly it's affected his life. He made a joke about his school's football team beating ours in the championship that year which incited my friend to scream "MURDERER!" at the top of his tongues

We only had fire drills, where we had to casually follow our teacher outside, stand at the collection spot for ~10min, and then go back in and continue the lesson.

Besides the two times where the canteen burnt the lunch so bad the alarms went off, we once had a suspected bomb alarm during uni where we were told to stay away for a few days while investigations were on, the ones who didn't need any of the instruments anyway. Turns out it was some depressed tween who made joke on reddit or tumblr about wanting to bomb the place.

Good times.

This never happened at my school. The school news channel did do a special on it after someone died from texting tho

We didn't have that but George Stroumboulopoulos came and told us not to do drugs

They did it at my school