So apparently I'm not a real American. Never had this happen

I feel like Alberta is just America North.

My school has this out on the football field. There was a girl in our school who died in a drunk driving accident and her parents came on that day and told us all about it too in addition to seeing the fake wreck thing.

That girl was so sweet and innocent it was super sad that she died. I will always remember her. Her name was Melody

for me in the late 90s, pre Columbine so no shooter drills, the state police bright in a presentation with a bunch of dui wrecks and deaths. then they followed it up with a wrecked car outside with helicopter ems arriving. obviously it made an impression since i still remember it. i still remember the smell of blood from driving past the fatal accident that actually killed a classmate too though.

I don't really remember this, but I remember them showing us literal crash photos and whatnot

My American high school did this in preparation for promotion night. Two teachers would play the role of the parents, and they would tow a couple of totalled cars onto the football field. The entire school would be paraded out into the stadium to watch the police come and tell the parents their child was killed after driving under the influence.

The DJ at my senior prom played a song where the chorus said something along the lines of "Put your hands up if you're an alcoholic". Of course everyone (17 & 18 years old) threw their hands up and danced to that one.

My school had a wreck towed on campus to look at, but no skit. No, that was too tame. They held periods during which they had a speaker come and show us gorey slides of the results of car wrecks. You could opt out of it of course, but most attended and traumatized ourselves. It sounds fake, and now I’m wondering if I am relaying a false memory about it or not. Did this happen to anybody else?

"Operation Prom Night". We lost several that day.

We got to wear some glasses that supposedly gave you drunken/on drugs vision. Everybody liked that.

Sounds like it may have been Gene Parmesan

As an American who grew up in the 90s and 00s... what the fuck, this was a THING?!

Born and raised in Alberta, I've never heard of or seen this

At mine, on that day, they started it by announcing over the intercom one morning that a popular classmate had been killed by a drunk driver on the way into school. Even though it should have been obvious that's not how it would really have been handled, it got the shock it was intended to get. A few people even ran out of classrooms crying. That was before everyone had cell phones.

I guess they wanted to make a point about the fatality rate statistic, too, though, so they kept going, announcing another person every however many minutes. It immediately became really obvious to everyone what was going on when they announced the second person. I think it lost more of its desired effect the more they continued.

In my school, one student was pronounced dead at the scene, one was taken by ambulance, and another was airlifted.

Every day, we would hear a car crash and heartbeat come up on the announcement system and then a grim reaper would walk into a classroom and tap a student on the should who "died" from drunk driving. They were taken to another room, where they put on makeup and a tombstone was placed for them in front of the school. At the end of the day, all the "dead" students would stand behind their tombstone. The "dead" would still attend class, but say nothing.

At the end of the week, there was a big presentation, where some people who survived a drunk driving accident spoke about their experience and statistics. He had suffered third-degree burns across his body and took off his shirt and walked around the auditorium, so that we could see the aftermath.

Fatal Choices was intense

What

We had to wear goggles that simulated being drunk like that one episode of the Simpsons and then try to do basic tasks like walk from one point to another or whatever so they could show how it impaired your motor skills. But it backfired because they just really exaggerate the visual impairment you get from drinking, they’re basically putting on a really too strong pair of glasses. But we did several rounds and eventually got somewhat used to it, it was a big game of who could seem the least impaired, the message was completely lost on us, etc

I work for a funeral home. We do a mock car crash every other year before homecoming.

The fire department gets two messed up cars and sets them up like they crashed, gets some students to play different roles, one was a drunk driver, some are unconscious, one is dead, one gets taken by helicopter by careflight. It's fun to participate in. Our role is to pull the hearse up and take the "body" away. No funeral.

American, in the early 00s is when I got my license.

We never had that shit.

What we had was a school promoted driver's ed course. I think there was a video in the first week about drunk driving, but it was never this dramatic.

Then, we had road time. Lessons on the actual rules/laws of the road? Nah. Chuck a 15 year old into a car with a few other students, give the instructor a chicken brake, and figure it out. If you passed the school program, you didn't have to take a written or road test, you just got your license. Unless you had an accident, you passed.

I'll just say, that seems to explain a lot of the shitty drivers in my home town. Hell, my first time getting on the highway was coached by a friend of the same age as I did it for the first time. Didn't learn that in the drivers ed program, we just took side/back roads.

Also round-a-bouts didn't exist back then, in our area. They got real popular in the last couple years. No one seems to know how to use them. Yield? What the fuck does that mean?

My wife and I moved to another state a few months ago. I just gotta say driving was something I fucking loathed. In this new state? Well, I still don't like it, but honestly, its fine. So much better. People observe traffic signs/laws. It makes a big difference.

Note that even in Alberta we wrote "high school" the same as you'd write "primary school" or "secondary school", which suggests there was also spelling lessons.