- Distracted driving can be deadly, and F.O.C.U.S. is a program dedicated to spreading awareness about how to avoid fatal crashes that result from irresponsible choices.
- Thousands of students filled the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center to watch a performance and listen to speakers with firsthand accounts of the permanent results of bad decision-making.
- Watch the video to hear one account of a woman who lost her father in a crash because of "intexication."
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
I'm Darby McCarthy at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center in Appleton where teens are learning the dangers of distracted driving.
I would like to warn viewers that though some of the following images are from a performance, they're quite graphic and may be upsetting.
An education program called F.O.C.U.S. visited to teach thousands of students about the devastating consequences of choosing to drive intoxicated, or even "intexticated," which is what speaker Charlene Sligting called texting and driving.
Sligting was a speaker because she lost her father in a deadly crash caused by a distracted driver just days before Father's Day.
"When you get out of bed, you don't plan on killing somebody. However, choices that someone makes can end up taking someone's life. And my family no longer had Father's Day — and we no longer have holidays — with my dad because someone made a choice."
The program included a harrowing performance of a trauma situation caused by distracted driving.
Members of rescue teams and victims spoke, and so did a woman who made the choice to drive distracted and crashed into a sanitation worker and pinned him against his garbage truck.
The speakers at the event said sharing their stories is emotionally challenging but important because they're hoping to save lives.
