On the morning of December 11, 2009, Eric Bollens of Safe Westside and Jim Snelling of Advanced Driving Dynamics, along with traffic enforcement officers from the Santa Monica Police Department, presented to a packed auditorium of Crossroads High School sophomores and juniors, the majority of whom identified themselves as drivers.
In a manner similar to other Safe Westside assemblies, as the cell phones were turned off and the talking died down, Eric Bollens, a former Crossroads graduate, began with his speech on the false allure of speed, the words borne of his own personal experiences. “Clutched in, engine revving, eyes focused, every muscle tensed, every fiber ready to go. Everyone has seen The Fast and the Furious, Gone in Sixty Seconds, or Redline, or at least has some inkling of what this might feel like. Whether you’re racing a quarter mile in front of hundreds of racers, or you’re just speeding down a twisty canyon road late at night, there’s something so alluring about the whole thing.” Students looked quizzical at the statement. Wasn’t this about safe driving? “I’m not going to stand up here and say that it doesn’t look fun and cool. It does. I’m not going to stand up here and claim it doesn’t look glorious and exhilarating. It does. I’m not going to stand up here and claim I have never done it. I have.” According to one student, when all the kids had filtered into the auditorium, they’d been expecting to here the standard set of lines telling them not to drive fast because it was stupid and illegal. They hadn’t expected to receive acknowledgment of the adrenaline rush and the fun found in reckless abandon. “There is an allure about it all… or there is at least until you realize the cost.”
“Then came January 31, 2009, the day that everything changed. January 31, 2009. I still remember that day like yesterday.” The mood of the whole room changed — in a moment, it shifted from a tale of exciting dragging and drifting to a nightmare of death and pain. “I picked up the phone. My friend was screaming: ‘Rosser just died. Rosser just died.’ The world froze. Everything disappeared. I couldn’t believe it. I made him say it again and again. I couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be real.” A deep pain could be heard in Eric’s voice even ten months after the loss of his friend. He did not sugar coat the pain, but rather spoke of it directly and succinctly. “Ten months later, I still wake up with a deep pain in my heart. Ten months later, I am still broken. And I am not the only one. So many of us are still broken. Some wounds will never heal. Things will never be normal again, not for me, not for his parents, not for his sister, not for any of us that called Nick Rosser family.”
It was not just a tragic tale, however. His speech was a call for the students in the room to make a change: “So why am I here today? That answer should be obvious. Because I lost my friend, my partner-in-crime, my brother. Because I hope that you all do not have to loose such a friend. And because I hope that none of you here will be the next one lost yourself… Every day, I remind myself that this does not have to happen again. Every day, I remind myself that there do not have to be any more memorials lining our streets.”
As he drew his speech to a close, there was absolute silence. Without skipping a beat for the faint of heart, he then led into a presentation of some facts about driving safety. He pinned speed, drinking, aggressive driving, and distractions as the most common accident causes among teenagers, specifically citing cell phone and passenger laws, and then he spent a couple minutes relating the monetary and legal consequences of these accidents: tickets, accidents, insurance, lawsuits, and even jail. “There are many things that we all know about driving. We’ve had them ingrained in our heads from an early age: don’t speed or drive recklessly; don’t drive distracted; don’t drink and drive; don’t get in the car with dangerous drivers. But how hard are those things to do?” Not that hard, he went on to say. He called upon every driver in the audience to think when they were behind the wheel, and to think for their friends as well.
Jim Snelling, a former Le Mans 24-hour driver and current head instructor of an advanced driving academy in Irwindale, then asked the drivers in the audience how highly they rated themselves as drivers? The numbers seemed to center between seven and nine. Jim suggested that they lacked something critical to even rank themselves a one: experience. He then spent a few minutes covering common dangerous situations drivers find themselves in and how to deal with them. What is the correct way to regain control when your car spins looses traction on a slick? How does one slow down when the break pedal becomes ineffective? What do you do when the accelerator sticks? Students listened, seeping up what they could, and Jim provided a sheet with a good deal of additional information as well for those so inclined.
The final act of this assembly was a Q&A section led by Officer Mike Ortiz, a motor officer with the Santa Monica Police Department. In a very matter of fact way, Officer Ortiz explained numerous driving laws about which students had questions. He explained the reasons that some of these laws existed. He imparted his own experiences with the dangers of driving. When the bell rang, signaling the end of the assembly, the panel thanked the students for their time and again each took a moment to urge the students to please think before they next slammed the pedal to the floor or jumped into the driver’s seat after a long night of drinking.
This assembly was organized by Eric Bollens, in collaboration with Crossroads administrators Tom Nolan and David Olds, as part of Safe Westside’s continuing youth education initiative, the fourth such Safe Westside assembly since March. In it’s continuing efforts to carry a message about safe driving to the community, Safe Westside continues to look for additional opportunities to speak at schools and other community events. For more information, please contact info@safewestside.com.
