The messenger and the message

KATE TROTTER, THE TRI-CITY NEWS, 12-MAR-2003

Two hundred kids caught Ted Swan's morning presentation Monday at Gleneagle secondary school - the one with in-your-face car crashes and in-the-gut recollections of what it is like to lift mangled bodies onto stretchers.

Exiting, some laughed, some talked about next class; one said, "It made me want to vomit."

But did they do the math?

Ballpark, one in five of them will be involved in a car accident, 100 per cent will know someone who is. Under-21s are eight per cent of all drivers but they account for one third of what ICBC pays out in claims; they are more likely to die in a thud of impact than by any other cause - more than suicide, more than murder, more than all diseases and medical problems combined, including cancer.

Last year, Swan, a 14-year paramedic, joined an august group of front-liners, including cops, emergency room physicians and a coroner, who visit high schools to tell kids they really can get hurt, really can die. Death is an inch away - the inch the gas pedal travels between 60 km/h and too fast.

"Last year, last spring, it seemed like a kid a week was dying," Swan said. "I was with everyone else saying something has got to be done. I took the Harry Truman saying: 'The buck stops here.'

"I've done 12,000 [ambulance] calls. Kids, school-age kids and younger, those are the worst of the calls.

"I tell them like it is, I tell them how I treat a patient. I have typically found they want to hear the truth, the facts and figures, the reality of a crash."

That reality isn't reflected in teen entertainment. The movie The Fast and The Furious is an example. "In real life, he would have died. There is a difference between real life and Hollywood. We pull against the myth."

Swan's stories are illustrated with brutally stark post-accident scenes by videographer Bill Cook but the most dramatic prop is always the pinkie, crooked to demonstrate the diameter of the catheter that male victims can expect to be inserted post-accident.

"Girls really react to the pinkie," Swan said, "and the goal is to get to the guys through the girlfriend - because it works."

"Guys try to impress girls," said Jatinder Rai, ICBC regional coordinator. "They act macho to impress them."

ICBC and Autoplan brokers sponsor speakers to visit high schools largely because nothing is more compelling than the storyteller who tells a story about the audience.

And nothing, said Rai, is more compelling than the truth.

Ted Swan gives The Talk but parents shouldn't let up, either, he said, because they are the main influence on how their children behave behind the wheel.

"What kind of a driver are you," Rai asked rhetorically. ''Always in a hurry? Do you teach patience? It doesn't come naturally."

Spring fever and summer distractions are especially disruptive to young drivers. Parents who want to walk the walk with driving-age children can attend family Driver Survivor sessions: Thursday, April 10 at Magee secondary, Vancouver, 7 to 9:30 p.m. (call 604-296-1520); Saturday, April 26, SUCCESS's Chinatown office (in Cantonese), 1 to 4 p.m. (call 604-408-7260).

As well, ICBC's web site has a comprehensive guide, "Navigating your teen's driving years" at www.icbc.com; it also includes a sample family contract that outlines responsibilities for teen driver and parents.