Whoops
 

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That sounds like a nasty "whoops" to me. At least they don't appear to be suing anyone.

That's fucking awful...

Short of not showing the photos at all, what could they do? They read off the names first. I guess I don't know how the girls family life was but since it appears that she knew her dad, why wouldn't she know his real name? Sometimes, coincidences like this happen.

While I would like to say that they were a little young to be shown those types of photos, I can't. Cops here just broke up an underage drinking party in which the youngest (at 12 y/o) blew a .067 and hadn't hit her peak. As kids start drinking at a younger age, they need to be show the consequences earlier also.

Geez, what are the odds of that happening? People throw around the word "traumatized" a lot these days with all the frivilous lawsuits that are filed, but I think it actually applies in this case... that must have been horrible.

I think it is a little young to be seeing things like that. I can understand the "scare them straight" thing they're going for, but at 12? I'm sure there are some 12 year olds who party hard or whatnot and drink, but I highly doubt they're driving afterward... but then again, you never know I guess.

I'd say it's ok to show them what can happen, but I would definitely hold out for about 3 more years or so... closer to when they'd actually "get" their licenses.

It seems that simply not dating or giving the location of the pictures would be a sufficient solution to this problem. The accident could still have been described, but without a date or location, this girl probably would not have had any idea that it was her father.

I was shown pictures like that in driver's ed. The pictures were taken locally, but did not show the victim's faces. Didn't have to; a bloody, half-crushed arm sticking out from under the wreck of a car is good enough. There was no need to know anybody's name, either: wonder why the local cops felt the need?

This could all have been avoided by 1) anonymity and 2) choosing photos more carefully, or a little judicious use of a photo editor's blur filter.

That's disgusting... I'm feeling alot of pity for the girl. She's gonna be traumatized for quite a while.

I saw this in today's paper. As far as knowing her father by a different first name, she must have also known his real name but just didn't make the connection because she wasn't looking for it. It's sad that she will now have that image burnt into her mind. No one, especially a child, should ever have to see a loved one in that manner.

It's awful but really what were the chances that it would happen? Seems they had take precautions to prevent this sort of thing... it just didn't work. Poor girl.

I'm going to be the insensetive one and argue that at least she'll never end up drinking and driving. Maybe if we shock kids this young, at least a few of them will get the message.

I'll be Insensitive Jerk #2 by agreeing with you 100%.

Sorry but that's probably the stupidest thing I ever heard. Where do you get that assumption from? I don't drink and drive and I didn't need to be shown pictures of mutilated family members to decide that for me. I'm certain that quite a few other members of the TFPers didn't need to have the same thing done to them.

What if she's smart enough to decide for herself that she doesn't need to drink and drive? Don't you think that she could've decided that based on pictures of OTHER people instead of her own father?

I'm always an insensitive jerk so I also have to agree.

The impact of it being someone's father in the class would have more of an impact than a random guy being shown.

One thing everyone is not taking into account: This comes from KNOXVILLE, TN!

I've lived in Knoxville since I was 4(I'm about to turn 21), and went through the public school system, this doen't suprise me one bit.

As for the showing kids at twelve.... look up the statistics for the area. There are a LOT of drunk driving accidents in Knox county involving underage drinking. I see crosses all over the place and hearing about them on the news is not that uncommon. It is a big problem that the police are trying their best to stop. They are trying to get to the kids with actual information before they get together with their friends with a six-pack for the first time(I know a lot of kids in the area start getting drunk at a pretty young age).

So attaching it to people they might (have) know(n) should help the impact.

When I took driver's education in high school, we were shown videos of horrific car accidents. It was very scary and disturbing. I didn't want to get behind the wheel after I saw that. I was 16.

Now, to show a twelve year old, her dead mutilated father, in class, in front of her peers, thats just fucked up. At the age of twelve, your four years away from driving anyway. Then for people to say that theres nothing wrong with that! Its better shock value? What! Huh? Its a little girl's mutilated father!! Thats good shock value!?! Whatever.

I'm with feelgood and Johnny Pyro...

This is ludicrous. Not just the practice of showing the graphic pictures, but also the sheer apathy some of the above posters have shown.

I'd like to see one of these "insensitive jerks" trying to tell this girl to her face that she is better off having seen her father that way. Perhaps The Anonymity of The Internet allows for such boorish statements?

Why do they even ask kids in the room if they know the names of the dead? Does it matter if they know them or not? What- they don't count as real HUMANS if they have a name nobody recognizes? Do the dead PEOPLE not have families who once loved them? Even if they were drunk, stupid, ignorant, or all of the above, they were still once a person with a soul just like you and me.

Accident scene photos are meant for analysis and scientific investigations to determine why things happened the way they did- NOT for scaring (and scarring) children.

Now that I think of it, maybe those insensitive posters were are actually desensitized and can no longer see the absurdity. Don't get me wrong, I respect an opinion, but I am really puzzled at how someone can have such ill regard for the sanctity of human life.

There are a TON of other ways to educate kids and to prevent drunk driving. This case clearly involves a flagrant lack of imagination.


By the way, if they can show mutilated corpses in school, I certainly hope they can to show two people having sex as well. (Rhetorically speaking, that is. I already know the answer is "No," they can't show two people in love, procreating. The reasoning behind that belongs in a whole other thread, though.)

Ridiculous. Utterly Ridiculous.

I think it's inexcusable. There's no need to be so graphic for one. I'd imagine if you're going to show photographs, showing ones that aren't quite as graphic would have the same effect and also not completely scar the kids. I'm 22 and I don't want to see that shit. I'd imagine I'm able to deal with it much better than a 12 year old and it's not going to scar me the same way, but it's still deeply disturbing.

And there's absolutely no need to announce the names and locations. A crash is a crash, regardless of where it is or who it was.

I hate my father and I don't think I'd cope very well with seeing him like that. We don't know the girl's feelings on the matter, but she's going to have a lot of issues to deal with now regardless because of insensitivity and carelessness on the part of law enforcement officers and educators, two groups of people who more than anyone should be able to show more compassion than that.

Given that he only died three years ago it's entirely possible that she was still dealing with his death and even if she wasn't this is just going to bring it all back. Completely inexcusable.

The world is real, peer pressure is real, and drunk driving is very real, and doesn't just affect those idiots who do it. These programs exist to show kids what happens when you drink and drive. It's not some wussy, watered-down, less-graphic nonsense. It's the real deal. You drink, you drive, you can kill people and/or yourself. Cut and dried.

To those who argue this is too graphic: tough shit. When you pull the programs, and use cute little cartoons of dead people to make it more palatable for the kiddies, your kids will get a much better view, first-hand of the destruction, torturous death and dismemberment that this horrible crime causes.

When they have to see this gore for the first time by witnessing a friend or loved one cut down for no reason, and dying in their arms, you can tell them there were programs that helped lower the number of "drinking and driving" incidents, but you felt it was too graphic to show people what really happens. Good luck on that one.

As for the story, it was an unfortunate accident. The odds of that happening of virtually zero, and it only happened because the kid didn't recognize her father's real name. Sad, yes- a reason to cut these programs? Fuck no.

You go, Analog.

Ask if anyone had lost a family member or friend to a driving accident?

The odds are slim but it happened and it's a terrible shame for the girl that it did. Besides the obvious trauma she's suffered, schoolkids can be brutal. For the rest of her school life she'll be known as the girl whose drunk dad crashed the car and killed himself.

They could use photos from a different part of the country to reduce the chances of it happening again.

Why not just simply not identify the vicitms? Problem solved.

They did. Go back and read the article.

analog - a twisted and demolished car has the same impact. Looking at something that weighs nearly (or over, depending on the model) two tons and seeing it utterly destroyed. A splash of blood on the pavement. Someone mentioned an arm. Showing a mutilated body seems exreme and nnecessary and even if you feel the need, why give names, dates and locations? That just seems to be asking for something like this to happen. As it said that she didn't know it was her dad until she heard the date and nature of the accident one would assume the body itself was unrecognizable. Why give a name then? What about a kid who's too timid to speak up? What about a kid who doesn't realize the severity of what he or she will be looking at until it's up on the screen? We're dealing with a generation that's been indoctrinated to hollywood style deaths. A kid may figure that he or she will see their family member with a bit of blood at the corner of their mouth and assume they can handle it.

The whole thing was poorly executed and that little girl is the one who has to pay for it.

And some kids are going to drink and drive no matter what you show them. Arguing that this is the better way to do it because it may prevent a few more cases seems illogical to me. Does one or two less cases justify traumatizing the rest of the kids? I'm not sure it does.

That's exactly what they should've done but I get the feeling that police from different parts of the country or state are less likely to share those kind of thing, I could be wrong thou

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The reason they do it, and the reason they give names and locations and choose people locally is that they want it to hit home, hard, that this is real. That it happens to people just like you, who live(d) in the same area. They give details because it brings it into focus. This isn't something that happened somewhere. It happened to this person, on this day and it ripped the shit out of them. I can understand feeling that the experience, even without this kind of horrible coincidence, is too traumatizing. I personally disagree, but I can understand that opinion.

I guess I've come through a close one myself, and I know a lot of people who weren't so lucky. I think about really close friends who might still be here if they or "the other guy" hadn't gotten behind the wheel. I honestly don't know if it really works or not, but assuming they've got some evidence that it does, I say keep doing it. And you want to talk about traumatized? Let's talk about a guy I grew up with, who got behind the wheel drunk and killed everyone else in the car, except himself. And they were all 90210-type close friends. He was a fuck up, but a really good guy at heart...and he is definately going to be massively fucked up for the rest of his life.

Wait, I'm not sure I understand what you mean: I did read the article and they did identify the victims. I'm saying, show the pictures without identifying the victims.

Whoops. I missed the "not". Sorry.

No worries, cheers :)

I don't think a mere twisted car has the same impact. People see twisted metal all the time on the news, videogames are rife with wrecked cars, you see wrecked cars on the side of the highway or in a towing service parking lot as you drive by it. There's no humanity, there's no "personal" impact, which is what it needs.

On that same line, it is precisely the "personal" touch that requires the name, date, and location to be given. It's purely a tool of psychology. If you give detail, it's processed more intimately in the brain, and people care more.

A dead body is a dead body- a dead body with a NAME, is a person. If he died out on Old Miller's Rd, people think "i drive down that very road" - which is why it's done by area, and not mixed around. The effect of the geographical proximity transfers the thought of "this is happening in other places, not here, this doesn't happen in MY town" to "this happened down the street" which is very important in creating a sense of ownership to the idea. Time also limits wandering thoughts of, "this used to be a problem, i never hear about this, this must be old news used to scare me". Finding out it happened only a few months ago makes a person think where they were at the time. It makes them assign some memory (if only for an instant) to the timetable they're being given. "I was at the grocery store when this guy died", "I was out partying with friends when this guy died", etc. Again, placing ownership of the idea.

Without those elements, no actual importance is placed on what they're seeing, not anywhere near as significant, which is why they do it. The police officers that volunteer (i've never heard of an officer being paid for speaking at a school on drunk driving) to take their time and do this work aren't looking to gross out some kids, they don't get their jollies on making little kids get upset by showing them pictures of dead, mutilated people, they're trying to save lives- and not just those of the future-drivers, but others as well. Drunk drivers kill more people than just themselves, they kill lots of totally innocent people who happened to be sharing the road at the same time.

Very good and well-worded points, Analog.

I agree that such programs should definitely continue, however, educators and the police should work together to present their message of safety more effectively (i.e. maximum psychological impact with minimal gory, mind-numbing slideshows).

For instance, I remember in driver's ed. when a mother came to talk to our class about how her son died and killed another random girl while driving drunk. Her story was personal, true, and there's no doubt it had a deep psychological effect on the whole class. The only remotely gruesome part of it was when she recalled seeing her son's lifeless body covered with a sheet after the accident. She showed us pictures of her son before the wreck- someone with whom she used to laugh and play- and that boy she raised and loved was now gone forever. She told the story with raw emotion, as if it happened the previous month and was still fresh in her mind... It had actually been more than fifteen years since she buried him. She's probably still going around to schools telling her story the same way today. The fact that she effectively communicated to us the pain, suffering, and the loss associated with the direct, permanent result of drunk-driving absolutely negated the need for graphic pictures.

I've never driven drunk, none of my friends have ever driven drunk, and nobody in my driver's ed. class ever had to see a bloody torso or crushed skull to keep them from driving drunk.


Lack of imagination (poor execution, like what Martian said), disregard for the dead, and insensitivity to the minds of children- that's what is occurring in that Knoxville school.

I wonder if (and really hope) the families of the deceased have given permission to show the mangled remains of their loved ones to 12-year olds. If not, that's another thing that is totally ridiculous about this story.

A dead person shouldn't be used as a visual aid in a safety presentation for kids. Let the emotionally stable adults and CSI-types look at the blood and guts, but don't crush the minds and imaginations of the children.

Why the fuck are we teaching kids to not drink and drive at TWELVE YEARS OLD. I don't know how much has changed in 8 years, but when I was twelve, the worst things I even thought about doing was looking at Playboy, shooting spitwads, or maybe even getting one cigarette and sharing it with my friends. I never even thought about drinking, nevertheless driving.

Perhaps some others are naughtier than you were?

Seriously, what's the point of showing these pictures to 12 year-olds, who can't even take theory lessons for 3-4 years?

I've had enough friends die because of car accidents that I'm too traumatized to drive at the age of 22. I cannot comprehend being shown pictures of anyone, never mind my dad, who were killed/mutilated as a result of a car accident at the age of 12.