Congratulations to the winners of Middlesex County’s 17th Annual Safe Driving PSA Contest! See their work here.
The Public Service Announcements were created by students of Middlesex County to educate teens on the dangers of Driving while Distracted and Impaired.
1st place East Brunswick High School, 2nd place Carteret High School, 3rd place Monroe High School
In the year 2000 Middlesex County Freeholder
H. James Polos created a program called the 3D "Middlesex County Don't Drink and
Drive PSA Video Contest," with the goal of reducing alcohol related fatalities
among teens, specifically targeting prom and graduation time. It has expanded to
include all distracted and impaired driving and is titled the 3D “Middlesex
County Don’t Drive Dangerously” Contest.
The contest is open to teens in
all public and non-public Middlesex County High Schools. Each high school is
invited to submit an English and or Spanish 60 second student-produced public
service announcement (PSA video) or 30 second audio PSA, that focuses on the
consequences of driving while distracted. A maximum of five students per
youth-led team can collaborate to change the social climate of their community
through the use of compelling PSAs that depict drinking and driving as
unacceptable behavior.
Co-sponsors include the Middlesex County Board of
Chosen Freeholders, Middlesex County Superintendent of Schools, the Injury
Prevention Program of the Level One Trauma Center at Robert Wood Johnson
University Hospital, National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency (NCADD)
of Middlesex County and Center of Alcohol Studies Rutgers, the State University
of NJ. to make this program even more successful.
Through this program,
teens become positive role models, empowering their peers to make healthy
decisions and resist negative peer pressure.