THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505120189
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 20 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALLISON WILLIAMS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Blair Taylor is a star, but she knows she is not invincible.
The 17-year-old Nansemond-Suffolk senior is featured in an award-winning video produced by her advanced journalism class. Its message: the 3.5 seconds it takes to buckle your seat belt could save your life.
By summer, her face could be beamed across Hampton Roads. Blair and six classmates wrote, taped and produced the 25-second public service announcement, ``Buckling Up for Safety,'' for a video contest sponsored by WAVY TV (Channel 10) and Drive Smart, a community traffic-safety program started in 1993 by USAA Insurance.
The video shows Blair climbing into a Volvo and buckling her seat belt. Narrator Lara Wise reminds of the quick, life-saving action.
WAVY and Drive Smart have sponsored the contest for public and private schools in Suffolk, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Portsmouth for two years. First-, second- and third-place winners may be selected from each city.
NSA has taken the $500 first prize for Suffolk each year, said Margaret Ware, Drive Smart coordinator. No Suffolk public high school entered this year.
Ware called the NSA video one of this year's best. ``It will be an easy one to format for television.''
A media specialist from Drive Smart will edit the first-place videos for television, and WAVY will select those to be aired as public service announcements, beginning about July 1.
For three days in March, the students brainstormed ideas, wrote scripts and rehearsed their roles. Then, with props and camcorders, they turned the school parking lot into their stage for two days.
The journalism students had filming mishaps that required their work to be shot several times before achieving perfection.
Camera operator Erin Esleeck, 18, barely escaped getting her toes mashed by the Volvo as she photographed inside the car. Another time, the camera chopped off half the car - the half in which Blair sat under her buckled seat belt.
``Buckling up is the first thing I do when I get in the car,'' said Blair. ``And all my friends wear their safety belts.''
Statistics from the state Division of Motor Vehicles show that the practice is not universal. Last year, 49 teen-agers between 15 and 18 were killed while not wearing safety belts in automobile accidents in Virginia.
Additionally, more than 3,000 other teens hurt in accidents on state highways last year were not buckled up.
``Teen-agers tend to think they are invincible,'' Ware said. ``Getting them to wear safety belts is a real challenge statewide today. That's why we chose this topic.''
The NSA winners will spend the prize on increasing safety for the school's traditional post-prom pilgrimage to Nags Head.
For the past month, the journalism students have recruited classmates to sign the Prom Promise, a program sponsored by Nationwide Insurance Co. More than 200 of NSA's 275 high school students have pledged not to drink or use drugs on prom night.
To entice students not to drive to the Outer Banks right after the prom, every student signing the Prom Promise gets a $5 coupon for gas - not good until the next day. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MUCHAEL KESTNER
Winners of the public service award for a TV commercial are, left to
right, Blair Taylor, Nancy Jones, Anne Carson-Goldberg, Meredith
Mansfield, Erin Esleeck, Lara Wise and Katie Putnam.
by CNB