Hofstra conference takes on dangerous driving

For decades, public health officials have hammered home a message –– smoking kills. They have done so in splashy advertising campaigns and in the halls of government. Any number of laws and ordinances prohibiting smoking in public venues have been passed as a result. These efforts, officials say, have paid dividends.

The national smoking rate has dropped from 40 percent of Americans in the 1970s to today’s low of 21 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll. In New York City, the rate has plummeted to 14 percent, says Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Now officials are driving home a new message –– dangerous driving can kill –– not only you, the driver, but also others who share the road with you. That message was telegraphed loud and clear during a Long Island Youth Safety Coalition conference at Hofstra University on Dec. 6 –– “Drunk, Drugged, Drowsy and Distracted: Using School and Community to Create Comprehensive Solutions to Dangerous Driving.”

Saul Lerner, the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District’s director of health, athletics and driver’s education, served as a keynote speaker at the event. Lerner said the objective behind conferences such as this is to continually bombard young people with messages alerting them to the potential dangers when they get behind the wheel of a car, similar to the way that health advocates have spread the word about smoking’s myriad dangers.

“That’s the analogy that we’re going to use to hammer it home,” Lerner said. “What we want to do is to bombard kids with the message that it is not cool to drive fast.”

Maureen McCormick, chief of vehicular crimes for the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office, who also served as a keynote speaker at the Hofstra conference, said that speeding is the number-one killer of teenage drivers, followed closely by drunken driving and driving while texting, a.k.a. distracted driving.

McCormick said there were more than 44,000 vehicle crashes in Nassau in 2010, noting that Long Island is a car community in which speed is valued. “We have to change the culture of suburban Long Island,” she said.