for me in the late 90s, pre Columbine so no shooter drills, the state police bright in a presentation with a bunch of dui wrecks and deaths. then they followed it up with a wrecked car outside with helicopter ems arriving. obviously it made an impression since i still remember it. i still remember the smell of blood from driving past the fatal accident that actually killed a classmate too though.

My American high school did this in preparation for promotion night. Two teachers would play the role of the parents, and they would tow a couple of totalled cars onto the football field. The entire school would be paraded out into the stadium to watch the police come and tell the parents their child was killed after driving under the influence.

The DJ at my senior prom played a song where the chorus said something along the lines of "Put your hands up if you're an alcoholic". Of course everyone (17 & 18 years old) threw their hands up and danced to that one.

I don't really remember this, but I remember them showing us literal crash photos and whatnot

My school had a wreck towed on campus to look at, but no skit. No, that was too tame. They held periods during which they had a speaker come and show us gorey slides of the results of car wrecks. You could opt out of it of course, but most attended and traumatized ourselves. It sounds fake, and now I’m wondering if I am relaying a false memory about it or not. Did this happen to anybody else?

We had something similar, but there was a helicopter instead of an ambulance

"Operation Prom Night". We lost several that day.

That "... or no" at the end got me good.

As an (insert counrty you like to shit on here) person, I only remember violent gunman drills specifically. We would all be instructed to hide in a corner(s) not visible from the hallway, and to stay dead silent, while the administration staff knocked on the doors and didn't do the "all OK" actions.

Funnily enough, my suggestion we "grab a knife or knifey object and we'll bum rush the fucker" NEVER went over well, for some reason.

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.

Born and raised in Alberta, I've never heard of or seen this

As an American who grew up in the 90s and 00s... what the fuck, this was a THING?!

Sounds like it may have been Gene Parmesan

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 got to wear some glasses that supposedly gave you drunken/on drugs vision. Everybody liked that.

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.

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. 🥺

In America they do that in between active shooter drills.

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.

This basically happened inThe Simpsons.

What

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.