Senior Seth Dunn summed it up for everyone, “It was a life changing experience man, it really just opened my eyes to a new perspective.”

Dunn is one of many who have been lucky enough to participate when the Arrive Alive tour recently visited Lakevkew. The Arrive Alive experience was created by UNITE, a tech company that has been working on an important mission: to teach minors and young adults the true dangers of distracted driving.

Texting, drinking, and taking drugs while behind the wheel create danger to others and yourself and UNITE wants to help prevent these life threatening choices as much as they can. And so they created the Arrive Alive Tour. The tour travels from campus to campus showing kids and young adults just how easy it is to get distracted and just how dangerous it can be.

UNITE has recently been using a new form of VR – Virtual Reality technology to show this. To do so,  small screen goes over a participant’s eyes and when paired with a car, can simulate driving while distracted or intoxicated without ever needing to move the vehicle.

Our school was lucky enough to be able to try this simulation out and the students really seem to get the point of just how dangerous these actions are.

Senior Tyler Kollar has high hopes for the device having an impact on teens saying, “When I tried driving in that simulation, I couldn’t believe how hard it was, like really, this thing is really gonna teach people about the true dangers.”

Another student who wants to remain anonymous stated, “I text a lot while driving, or at least did, and I never really realized how hard it was to focus on the road until I had a guy pointing out every mistake I made.”

Senior Doug Patterson also mentioned that, “It made me realize just how much it can affect you being under the influence. And helps give you that realization that you’re not invincible.”

It’s sad to see that as technology improves, with new phones and touch screen radios, distractions become harder and harder to avoid. But I feel that this event has shown us that technology also allows for better and more persistent ways of showing us just how dangerous these distractions are and helps prevent making huge mistakes.