For several years, the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles, with assistance from various non-profits organizations and sponsors (this year, Travelers), has conducted a statewide video contest for high school students, on safe driving. The specific topic this year was distracted driving and texting. The text and link below to this year’s top ten videos come from my friend Bill Seymour of the Connecticut DMV. It only takes about five minutes to scroll through these 30 second videos.
Two years ago, when my daughter Martha was a member of the DMV’s Safe Teen Driving Advisory Committee, I got to watch more than 100 entries. A neat experience.
These videos should give us hope for the future. Not only do they show that there are teens out there who are passionate about the causes of safe teen driving and stopping texting and distracted driving, but they show that Connecticut may be a hotbed of future movie-making talent!
In the interest of full disclosure, the video production class at Cheney Tech, led by advisor Ken Simon and student Bailey Norman, invited me to be the spokesperson for one of the three videos they produced. One of their entries – not the one I appeared in!– made the top ten. Ken and Cheney Tech students – congratulations and good work!
As the DMV’s announcement notes, the winners have been selected and will be announced on April 4th, so I guess it’s OK for me (I am writing this the day before the Oscars, so I guess we’re all in this mode) to express my choice: I think the winner will emerge from the one about abbreviations, the one in which the teen driver’s conscience is sitting in the back seat, or the one in which cell phones are the cars.
Enjoy, and to all of the participants and winners: you are saving lives.
The DMV release:
Student Directors and Your Accompanying Videographers and Actors — Thank you for your submissions to the 2010-2011 DMV teen safe driving video contest, From the Driver’s Seat to the Director’s Chair. We received more than 160 entries and it was very difficult to choose among them. Each had special messages and ways of presenting the safety messages. More than 20 judges, including Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, met in Hartford today to discuss videos and also review the Top 10 finalists who were selected by 24 other judges statewide. The judges who gather today also selected the top three winners. Those names will be announced April 4 at the special awards ceremony hosted by our chief prize sponsor, Travelers Companies.
You can see the Top 10 videos on the DMV Center for Teen Safe Driving Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/DMV-Center-for-Teen-Safe-Driving/161570093887045 or by going to http://ct.gov/teendriving and choosing the Facebook link there.
