Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Frazzled wrote:Respectfully, that argument has been the rationalization of the dictator/Big Mother for many years. Won't someone please think of the children!!!

*What if it costs $500bn? Is it still worth it?
*What about rape, murder, robbery, corporate fraud, welfare cheats (ok there may be no difference there)every other crime? Are we going to have national rape day on campus? How are they going to demonstrate that?

Again, just show a nice video of the last DUI criminal getting capped and you can save all that money.

500 Billion worth it?
Yeah.

You got kids. Right, Frazz? I do, too... mine are worth far more to me than that.
Would you say YOURS is worth $500 billion?

We DO have all of those things demonstrated. They just don't get a special "day." Our youth are incessantly educated at school and on television about the evilness of rape. Movies are always showing the evil of rape and showing women who overcome it. Yes. I'm aware that there are things out there that show the exact oppoosite, as well. My point is that the lessons and reminders ARE out there.
embezzlers are all over the news, humiliated and expeosed for what they are. Shoot, ask any high school student what he knows about Bernie Madoff. I'd wager most KNOW what he did and what's going to happen to him (allegedly, of course).

Killing someone because they DUI... Wow. That's even harsher than *I* get. ; )

Frazzled wrote:

Anung Un Rama wrote:I'm not sure if the whole thing is a very good or bad idea, but the whole thing with people getting taken out of class by a guy dressed as Death seems just very awkward and not really threatening.

Hence why its important to act as its presented-a kidnapping, and a chance to go Mano O Mano with Death and win!

After you beat death senseless, you could sue the school and whatever numbnuts organization that is for mental duress from the trauma they put you through.

You seem to be under the presumption that it was random kids.
The kids taken from class in this manner are volunteers. they know it's going to happen. Tpically, they're members of S.A.D.D. or a similar group. That's why they just *happened* to have a change of (all black) clothes on hand.


E

Saving money is good. I don't think that this whole dui day thing is a good idea. When I was younger, the only thing outside of my parents telling me about not drinking and driving was my drivers ed class and a boy scout thing where cops came over to my troop and showed us livers and stuff and told us that dui's were bad. This whole idea of bringing the grim reaper into class is just dumb and expensive...

You seem to be under the presumption that it was random kids.
The kids taken from class in this manner are volunteers. they know it's going to happen. Tpically, they're members of S.A.D.D. or a similar group. That's why they just *happened* to have a change of (all black) clothes on hand.

Irrelevant, under common law, and Texas law, you can stop a kidnapping with deadly force. If you perceive a kidnapping is occuring that school desk makes an excellent weapon while you call on your cell phone to the police that mass kidnappings are occurring on campus by masked men. For an extra bonus tell the police the masked men are kidnapping the football coach (NOT THE FOOTBALL COACH!!!! SON YOU DON"T WITH FOOTBALL IN TEXAS)Then get some popcorn and a coke, go sit in the lunchroom and watch the highjinks as hundreds of heavily armed heavily ed off cops storm the school and take out Death and his kindred spirits. Oh the fun you will have!



After all, in the US we don't do anythying about our school massacres.

MagickalMemories wrote:500 Billion worth it?
Yeah.

So, wait, you think that the government is justified in spending 500 billion dollars to stop a kid from getting himself killed?

I don't think you understand how money works.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

I don't think you understand how money works.

Thats a common problem. Neither does our executive and legislative branches at either the Federal or State level...

Orkeosaurus wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:500 Billion worth it?
Yeah.

So, wait, you think that the government is justified in spending 500 billion dollars to stop a kid from getting himself killed?

I don't think you understand how money works.

First off, $500b is a drastically exaggerated amount.
Second, it is not the government that is spending all the money that schools are using for these programs. Most, in fact, are from private donations and fund raisers
Third, and most importantly, you must not have kids.


I don't think you understand what being a parent is.

Eric

MagickalMemories wrote:

Orkeosaurus wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:500 Billion worth it?
Yeah.

So, wait, you think that the government is justified in spending 500 billion dollars to stop a kid from getting himself killed?

I don't think you understand how money works.

First off, $500b is a drastically exaggerated amount.
Second, it is not the government that is spending all the money that schools are using for these programs. Most, in fact, are from private donations and fund raisers
Third, and most importantly, you must not have kids.


I don't think you understand what being a parent is.

Eric

I have kids and understand what being a parent is. This scheme is still blindingly stupid and still blindingly expensive if they are wrecking cars and have helicopters banging about. I bet private donations didn't foot the bill for that lifeflight copter. Take that money and spend on more worthwhile endeavors.

MagickalMemories wrote:First off, $500b is a drastically exaggerated amount.

But you agreed with the 500 billion...

Frazzled wrote:
I have kids and understand what being a parent is. This scheme is still blindingly stupid and still blindingly expensive if they are wrecking cars and have helicopters banging about. I bet private donations didn't foot the bill for that lifeflight copter. Take that money and spend on more worthwhile endeavors.

I'll chime in since they did this at my HS when I was there:

They didn't have a copter for the event at my school, so that situation is different, but the cars they wrecked were previously wrecked (or donated cars that were subsequently wrecked) cars that they brought in and had volunteers play victims and the volunteer fire-department came in to demonstrate the rescue. Minus getting in a copter, it's not _that_ expensive.

Thanks for the clarification Jin. Its not expensive which is an issue for me.

Still dumber than rocks though.

No prob, Frazz. Granted, this was only how it went down at my school - can't vouch for every iteration of this program.

The thing with this program, while not necessarily tackling the core issues, is visceral enough to make an impact on a fair number of kids. It wasn't so theatrical at my school (ie, no guy dressed as Death - just a couple of the volunteers for the program coming in and calling for the volunteer victims). It's easy to dismiss the whole thing from an outside perspective, but as a kid in school, when you're reminded every fifteen minutes (I think I recall the name of the student being chimed through the school PA system every fifteen minutes) throughout the day about it, it tends to stick to some part of your mind about the meaning behind the whole campaign.

Like I mentioned the first time I posted in this thread, at day's end when this happened at my HS, everyone who was "called out" had to read out-loud a letter that they had to write out to their parents/family/friends from the perspective of a kid who'd lost their life from a DUI accident. Some might call it cheesy/dumb/whatever, but I can tell you that not one person snickered or laughed throughout that entire assembly. To be brutally reminded of your own mortality at a point in your life when you typically feel invincible and full of life isn't worthless, and I would say probably affects more kids than you'd think.

That being said, again, there're other issues at hand which are not well addressed by this program. Still, I don't think it's a particularly expensive program (I'm pretty sure it's not government funded at least), and it has a non-trivial amount of emotional impact that merely showing footage of car-crashes and visually shocking kids fails to do.

My 2 cents.

did i for get to mention that the reaper was an ununiformed officer
the govtment had nothing to to about this
it was a private organiztion being sponserd by members and businesess

I imagine he would look kind of silly if he tried to wear the uniform over the cloak.

garret wrote:did i for get to mention that the reaper was an ununiformed officer
the govtment had nothing to to about this
it was a private organiztion being sponserd by members and businesess

Okay, yeah, probably should have mentioned that one, it kinda kills my idea of the government being wasteful. If its just citizens being wasteful, then thats okay.

Frazzled wrote:I have kids and understand what being a parent is. This scheme is still blindingly stupid and still blindingly expensive if they are wrecking cars and have helicopters banging about. I bet private donations didn't foot the bill for that lifeflight copter. Take that money and spend on more worthwhile endeavors.

I know YOU know, Frazz. I was referring to Orkeosaurus. Sorry if I was unclear.

IF they were specifically wrecking the cars for the event, you're right. Mostly, though, the cars are non-functional donated autos from REAL DUI wrecks.

My kids high school, when we lived in VA, used to put one up in front of school for a couple weeks before Prom.

Typically, the copter is paid for with donations. Yes. At least, at my high school, it was (granted, this was about 20 years ago

Orkeosaurus wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:First off, $500b is a drastically exaggerated amount.

But you agreed with the 500 billion...

Yes. I did... and do.
You failed to comment on the rest of the post.
Do you have kids? I doubt it, or you'd understand.
Look... Frazz agrees with you, AND he has a kid... ask him if HIS kid is worth a $500b expenditure. Ask your parents if YOU are. LOL Shoot. Ask MY parents if *I* am (and I'm 37; not quite a kid anymore).

mcfly wrote:Okay, yeah, probably should have mentioned that one, it kinda kills my idea of the government being wasteful. If its just citizens being wasteful, then thats okay.

You weren't directly saying, but I'm presuming thie was sarcasm. Please, forgive me if it wasn't. : )

If it WAS, then please note my comments above.


Thanks, all.
Eric.

cars were functional but donatedted from a dealership
i know this because they had shown a video where they were driving the cars and showed the "crash"
everything was donated
even the fake beer bottle that they were drinking from
except from the actual response vehicles and officers

It's not a matter of "will I spend everything I have to prevent my kid from dying", it's a matter of what is reasonable for a chance of something happening.

You say you'd give everything you have to save one of your children, correct? There's not the slightest thing wrong with that, but would you spend everything you have* trying and show your kids the dangers of drunk driving? I should hope not. It's irrational, you'd probably do more harm to them in your bankruptcy than you would with your demonstration.

Now, your second point was fair enough; it was a hypothetical 500 billion dollars, and I assumed it was the government spending this hypothetical money, or at least a portion of it (and, to be fair, even a tiny portion of 500 billion dollars is absurdly large). My main issue is with people who say that every government program that "could save one life" needs to be given whatever amount of money they ask, on the rationale that "you can't put a price on a child's life" or some similar rationale. That doesn't work, in actuality (you wouldn't have a government very soon...), but I may have went off on a bit of a tangent there. Sorry about that, I didn't mean to imply that financial gain should be more important to you than the people you love.

Also, no I'm not a parent. You called me on that.

* Hypothetically, of course, the actual demonstration put on by the volunteer groups was probably far less of an expense, especially when broken down among it's supporters.

Heres a video of one of the things. As you can see its rather cheesy and incredibly corny. You get to see a car taken apart though, so its kind of worth it. I missed over half of my math class so that was good too.


I agree with frazzled, if you have ever seen an actual person die or been to an actual funeral this program is nonsense. BTW when I laughed the people in front turned around and one of the girls was crying. Her friends said that one of her friends had died in a DUI crash. I said "Well, I've seen people die of cancer and suffer from it. At least her friend probably died right away with little suffering.".

I'm a horrible person.


EDIT: Of course we don't see the trial/hospital stuff till after the whole thing is over.

Dude I so want that Death outfit for my next corporate function!

Sent the Youtube to She Who Must Be Obeyed to get her thoughts as well.

halonachos wrote:
I agree with frazzled, if you have ever seen an actual person die or been to an actual funeral this program is nonsense. BTW when I laughed the people in front turned around and one of the girls was crying. Her friends said that one of her friends had died in a DUI crash. I said "Well, I've seen people die of cancer and suffer from it. At least her friend probably died right away with little suffering.".

I'm a horrible person.

If I'd of been there I would have laughed with you. Doesn't make you horrible, makes you a realist.

Orkeosaurus wrote:It's not a matter of "will I spend everything I have to prevent my kid from dying", it's a matter of what is reasonable for a chance of something happening.

You say you'd give everything you have to save one of your children, correct? There's not the slightest thing wrong with that, but would you spend everything you have* trying and show your kids the dangers of drunk driving? I should hope not. It's irrational, you'd probably do more harm to them in your bankruptcy than you would with your demonstration.

If I needed to, yes, I would.
I've lost relatives to Drunk Drivers. I'd rather have the relatives than the money.

Also (and I hope it's clear that I'm NOT being argumentative. I find this to be a nice discussion, though I am not fond of the topic), you're making a case for all that expenditure to save one, specific, kid. The idea behnd it is not that you're targeting ONE kid. You're targeting them all and, if you ONLY reach one of them, the expenditure was worth it.

Admittedly, it's not really likely that anyone can ever truly survey if any kids were reached by these things. I mean, you can survey them all going in, and again coming out, and MANY will have new , changed responses that they're not gonna drink & drive. In practice, though, things might be different at this weekend's party. You know?

So, I admit that it's not overly measurable but, IMO, it's still worth the money.


Eric

Worth the money yes, but they could do something less cheesy than the "grim reaper" thing. Everyone is in bleachers so its kind of like watching a movie. They need to find something that would really reach them, like pictures of actual dead people from car crashes. Fiction can't reach the level of fear that reality can.

MagickalMemories wrote:If I needed to, yes, I would.
I've lost relatives to Drunk Drivers. I'd rather have the relatives than the money.

But that only works if you can guarantee that there wouldn't be drunk driving, or at least guarantee a significant result.

In a sense "If I needed to" is the crux of the issue. If that would save them, the money is well used. If it would probably do nothing, the money was probably not used well. Not when there's better uses for it (college, charity, whatever).

Also (and I hope it's clear that I'm NOT being argumentative. I find this to be a nice discussion, though I am not fond of the topic), you're making a case for all that expenditure to save one, specific, kid. The idea behind it is not that you're targeting ONE kid. You're targeting them all and, if you ONLY reach one of them, the expenditure was worth it.

Well, the fact that this demonstration was done on a large scale and done with mostly volunteer work and already destroyed vehicles certainly makes it a decent return for the money.

While I'm not sure I would commit my money to this kind of thing, it doesn't really seem like a waste. (Alright, the grim reaper thing would be silly, and that poem was sort of awful, but the core idea is sound.)

Admittedly, it's not really likely that anyone can ever truly survey if any kids were reached by these things. I mean, you can survey them all going in, and again coming out, and MANY will have new , changed responses that they're not gonna drink & drive. In practice, though, things might be different at this weekend's party. You know?

True.

The upside is it's probably not a devastating cost either way. (Plus, no one ever learns stuff in school anyway, so taking the time out of the day isn't much of an issue.)

The poems and such at the ending vary by school. Most of them are written by the parents or the kids who participated.

EDIT: They use their real names. So if Oscar Smith was volunteering for the program, then an obituary for Oscar Smith would be read. They don't use fake names.

i dont get you guys
if it helps stops drunk driving isnt it worth it
frazz what if the guy who kill that person saw the thing
i went in thinking it was stupid and going to be cool and fun to wacth
but after it i wanted to cry and then reading the obituary i burst into tears just thinking what if that guy actuaaly got killed
then when the father got up and read his last message to his daughter i cried
seeing the damage it can cause even if its fake can show you the damage it does

I should make allowances here for the young here.

1. If it doesn't cost me anything
2. If its volunteers
3. If its tailored to kids who haven't seen the harshness of life

Then its fine. Excellent the Grim Reaper. Thats just stupid and I woudl have been suspended laughing.

Would be interesting how this would go down in some of your more "troubled" schools though.

it mostly in places where home values are very high

garret wrote:it mostly in places where home values are very high

Which seems like a pretty big flaw in the system if you ask me....

i dont know that just what a teacher said

@Garret:

"if it only reaches ONE kid"...

In the poem, it reached the victim.

Problem is, the one who needed it DIDN'T pay attention and didn't listen to it. They are just as likely to ignore any future attempts to appeal to their better sides, too.

We had a vehicular incident [suicide by automobile] up here last week. A kid wrote off his car and killed himself. His girlfriend was devastated.

Two weeks earlier, he's written off his previous car, while DUI.

His fatal crash was done when he was driving while suspended.

These are the kids that need to hear the message. These are the kids who don't listen. They cannot be taught it, and generally only learn first hand (but then they are dead, so can't learn anyway.).