REGINA – About 200 teenagers gathered for the Students Against Drinking and Driving (SADD) conference on Saturday.
“It’s really important that we start young and that they gain that knowledge before they’re out there in the community and that they can go back to their peers and say, ‘Hey, you know what, I’m not letting you make this decision tonight,’ and it being okay,” said Meaghann White, president of the organization.
The two-day conference, held at the DoubleTree hotel, included awards and group sessions. There were several guest speakers, including Kevin Brooks, who became a paraplegic after driving drunk and crashing his car. The collision resulted in the death of the passenger, his friend.
“It was just devastating. I mean, I thought about killing myself but I couldn’t even get out of a hospital bed to do anything if I wanted to,” he said.
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Hayden Haubrich, 15, travelled from Moosomin for the event.
“Nobody will come up and just say they drink and drive, like that’s not a cool thing. It’s just, I know it happens,” said Haubrich of his peers.
“I live in a smaller town so everybody knows when something happens and there’s been people who have passed away in my town and it’s, like, a huge deal and I just don’t want anything to happen, especially in my high school.”
According to Statistics Canada data from 2011, Saskatchewan had more than double the police-reported impaired driving incidents than the national average.
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