If you’re a sopho­more or older, it’s likely that you’ll have taken a Driver’s Ed class by now. Safe dri­ving videos, guest speak­ers, booklets—they’re all sup­posed to help edu­cate you on the dan­gers of reck­less dri­ving. But, how many of you have sim­ply stud­ied, taken the tests, passed, and then for­got­ten the major­ity of what you learned because so lit­tle of it was new?

We all know to wear our seat­belts, stick to the dri­ving limit, etc… because adults have told us to do so time and time again. But what if it were your peers, your very friends, who reached out to you with these warnings?

If you’re on this site, it’s likely that you know about the recent U Got Brains Cham­pion Schools com­pe­ti­tion. Attend­ing the show­case that announced the win­ners, it was dif­fi­cult not to real­ize that these stu­dents who car­ried out these projects have grown to truly believe in their messages.

A cou­ple of the coolest parts:

• Short films! In one film, the local police helped out, get­ting sur­pris­ingly into pulling peo­ple over and chas­ing teenagers in cars with sirens. (All act­ing, no wor­ries). In another film, stun­ning drama– like scenes uti­lized spe­cial effects, tal­ented actors-to-be, and… coffins? (Appar­ently they had a cof­fin lying around, some­how) to present a scar­ily true message.
• Fairs and assem­blies! Ask­ing the help of the fire depart­ment, police depart­ment, local insur­ance com­pa­nies, and more, one school set up a fair for the entire school to take a part in, while another school held an assem­bly with spe­cial guest speakers.
• T-shirts and wrist­bands! Walk­ing around the show­case, you could have gath­ered sev­eral hand­fuls of wrist­bands, sil­i­cone rings, pins, stick­ers, key­chains, and more. Handed out at dif­fer­ent schools, they pro­vided a way to ensure that the stu­dents remem­bered the lessons taught about safe driving—in a form they were guar­an­teed to take notice of. Who doesn’t like free stuff?

Amaz­ing, isn’t it, what these teenagers came up with and car­ried out? And fun­nily enough, it’s a lot more con­vinc­ing when your friend tells you that you’ll be shoot­ing around the car with a force of 10,000 pounds if you get in a crash with­out your seat­belt on than if your teacher tells you that it’s against the law. So… if you care about your­self and your friends, try to help reach out to them your­selves, because you can actu­ally help to save lives. As one school’s team said to their friends,

“I would never let a friend like you go.”

• Check out UGotBrains.com
• See the Award Win­ners