Vermont recently had a two day Traffic Enforcement Summit which was held at the Lake Morey Inn in Fairlee, Vermont. The purpose of the summit was to bring together the top people in the state to look at the state of highway crashes in Vermont and to develop strategies designed to reduce traffic crashes in the future. The first day was designed to provide attendees with the latest information and trends- resources available, effective motorcycle enforcement, police leadership, improving prosecution of motor vehicle and traffic criminal cases, and advances in impaired driving enforcement, among other topics.
The second day was designed to put together the best minds in Vermont in the areas of traffic safety and traffic related crime, and to have them develop plans for the next five years and beyond. They were broken down into five groups and tasked with coming up with answers to the following three questions:
What do you want crash reduction to look like in the next five years?
How can we identify, coach, support and develop the next generation of highway safety enforcement leadership?
How can we encourage and support the enforcement community to value crash reduction enforcement as an effective tool to reach their own goals?
The breakout sessions were led by a professional facilitator, and the responses of the people in the groups were written down by student scribes. The people who designed this conference, who are from the Governor’s Highway Safety Program, asked the Stafford Technical Center’s Vermont Teen Leadership Safety Program members to act as scribes, and record the responses, which will form the basis for the state’s future traffic safety efforts. They chose VTLSP students because the mission of that group, which is aligned in Vermont with SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions), addresses these traffic safety issues. While six Stafford VTLSP members originally signed up to be scribes at the conference, only two were actually able to go, as others were sick or had unforeseen transportation issues. They were Kayla Jones, senior from Mill River Union High School, and Kayla Stewart, a junior from West Rutland High School. Four VTLSP members from Blue Mountain Union High School, which is much closer to Fairlee, were able to assist with the scribing duties. Four all six students, but especially for the Stafford students, this represented a significant contribution of time and effort to the residents of the state of Vermont.
Recently, students from the Vermont Teen Leadership Safety Program Chapters in Proctor High School and Stafford Technical Center began a partnership with the Rutland Free Library in Rutland which is aimed at reducing excessive speed on roads and highways and the many crashes which result from speeding. At the winter meeting of the Vermont Teen Leadership Safety Program (VTLSP), an organization of high school students from about 40 Vermont schools, which focuses on highway safety issues, the students decided that they wanted to work on a project to reduce the incidence of speeding and the deaths and injuries resulting from speeding.