Joseph McCluan, a presenter of Street Smart, demonstrates how he would place a breathing tube into the mouth of an automobile accident victim, portrayed by Liberty High sophomore Tyler Kubilus, Friday morning in Eldersburg.

ELDERSBURG - Tyler Kubilus lay strapped to a gurney, his head clamped into a brace. Nearby, two paramedics from Florida displayed enormous needles, catheters and other medical equipment they’d have to use to treat the 16-year-old, or anyone else, for traumatic injuries from a car crash.

Joseph McCluan and Chris Stocks of the Orlando, Fla., fire department started their demonstration at Liberty High School Friday morning with a slide show of graphic images of young men and women who weren’t so lucky.

“Most of the time Chris and I have to drag a dead body out of a car, the person didn’t have a seat belt on,” McCluan said.

He and Stocks are two presenters of Street Smart, a program created in 1989 by the nonprofit organization Stay Alive From Education. Twelve firefighters and paramedics from the Florida-based organization travel in pairs throughout the U.S. and other countries to show students the outcome of making irresponsible decisions, focusing on drunken driving and seat belt use. Presenters use actual medical equipment and student volunteers to simulate saving a person’s life during each presentation.

This week, McCluan and Stocks gave several presentations at all but one Carroll County public high school, as well as at the Career and Technology Center. Winters Mill High School was unable to hold the presentation because of scheduling conflicts, according to Anna Bible, coordinator of safe and drug-free schools for the school system.

The program, which reached about 5,000 students, was funded by the school system and the Carroll County Health Department. The total cost was $8,500, according to Shannon Oehlers, a health educator at the Health Department.

Oehlers said about one-third of all vehicle crashes in Carroll County in 2005 involved young drivers, according to the University of Maryland National Study Center for Trauma and Emergency Medical Systems.

Those 700 crashes included nearly 300 injuries and six fatalities, she said.

“We knew the problem needed to be addressed,” Oehlers said.

According to McCluan, vehicle crashes are the No. 1 cause of teen deaths, and in most cases they are preventable.

He said the goal of Street Smart is not to scare students, but to give them real life examples of what can happen if they choose to not wear a seat belt or drive while intoxicated.

“At this age, a lot of kids feel they’re invincible — nothing can kill them,” he said.

Stocks said as a paramedic, he has heard hundreds of excuses for not wearing a seat belt, ranging from discomfort to fear of being trapped inside the vehicle. Some people even complain that buckling a seat belt takes too long, he said.

“How long does it take, a second? It’s a couple hours for an autopsy,” Stocks said.

McCluan showed a picture of an overturned cement truck and its driver lying beside it, underneath a sheet. Not wearing a seat belt puts drivers and passengers at risk for being ejected from a vehicle, making them 25 times more likely to die in a crash, he said.

The paramedics asked students to share reasons why some people choose not to wear seat belts.

“Sometimes people are too drunk to put it on,” Kubilus said. He later played the role of a drunk driver whose body was paralyzed and disfigured in a car crash to which McCluan and Stocks responded.

After the presentation, Kubilus admitted he doesn’t always wear a seat belt in the back seat, but now he plans to buckle up every time he gets in a car.

“I don’t want to be sitting on [a gurney] with a neck brace,” he said.

By Karen Karaszkiewicz - Carroll County Times Staff Writer