U-Hi student presents traffic safety campaign at national forum

Hunter Watson, a University High School senior, is one of four students from around the country to show off school traffic safety campaigns during an international conference in Chicago last week.

She told the people attending her session about U-Hi student efforts to get young drivers to slow down and be safe.

Watson said she spoke to a breakout group of about 150 people.

“As soon as I got in front of the group, I was fine,” she said about any nerves heading into the presentation.

She was invited to the Lifesavers National Conference on Highway Safety Priorities through the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. About 2,000 people attended.

The conference was looking for examples of peer-led high school traffic safety projects.

Watson submitted a three-minute video she produced on U-Hi’s efforts to persuade students to drive safely.

Watson took advantage of the school’s investment in video equipment, which is part of its Viable Visions Productions class and club.

Having access to the equipment, “That’s what set me apart,” she said.

Her successful video was selected in a competition sponsored by the traffic safety commission. In it, Watson highlights various activities and messages being undertaken by students.

She is president of the Associated Student Body, and has enlisted other student leaders to participate.

The video highlights pledge drives to get students to promise not to text and drive, drink and drive and to stay safe during prom night.

Messages are delivered over the internal Titan News Network, which students watch on Tuesdays during homeroom classes.

In addition, the students deliver messages over the intercom, on posters and social media.

Student leaders took safety message posters to the front of the school along 32nd Avenue to campaign for safety with passing drivers, including students.

Driver safety training programs, including one brought to campus by Ford, were also outlined in her video.

Traffic safety messages have taken on greater importance in the community since the death of two U-Hi girls in 2013 at a dangerous hump at Bates Road and Ponderosa Drive. The “Ponderosa Jump” has since been removed.

“The whole community was shocked by it,” she said.

Watson said that the school has held off on rerunning the “Every 15 Minutes” program, which dramatizes the loss of human life to alcohol-related accidents.

That campaign has involved removing students from classes as if they were killed.

The “victims” were hauled away on a gurney and then had their faces painted to make them look like a corpse.

They returned to later classes but without speaking for the rest of the day.

Her passion for getting out traffic safety messages stems in part from personal experience. She has a bedridden uncle who was paralyzed in a traffic accident many years ago.

Then, last spring, she had a driver turn into her SUV on Argonne Road as she headed to school. She said she had strained tissue in her arm that took months to go away.

“It doesn’t have to happen to someone you know in order to get” the message, she said.

She said she plans to continue working on traffic safety messages when she moves to Spokane Community College next year.