Agawam, Westfield teens’ texting PSAs are state finalists

Date: 5/10/2023

Texting and driving can have dangerous, even deadly, consequences. That’s the message an Agawam High School student and four Westfield High School students want to drive home to their peers.

They are among finalists in a statewide contest to produce a public service announcement, or PSA, aimed at capturing the attention of teens with important road safety messages. The winning script will be produced as a 30- or 60-second PSA that will be broadcast later this month.

High schoolers across the state were invited earlier this year to write scripts for the Look Both Ways Road Safety contest sponsored by Fundación MAPFRE and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Fifty teams from across the state entered the contest.

Agawam High School junior Dylan Griswold has been driving for only six months, but he’s aware of the dangerous combination of texting and driving. A student in the school’s TV Production and Broadcast Journalism class, his script shows a blizzard of text messages appearing on a windshield.

“I wanted a visual metaphor to show how texting can distract drivers,” he said.

In Griswold’s script, a young male teen is driving alone along a road on a clear sunny day while texting. Texts slowly pop up on the windshield and then disappear, but increase in frequency as he engages more with his phone. When the driver turns on the windshield wipers, some texts are wiped away, but, like snow in a blizzard, they continue to build up. The entire windshield becomes covered in text messages until, finally, he crashes.

Ryan Brown, who teaches the class, said Griswold’s script was “a pretty ingenious” way of thinking.

“It’s a very minimalist design in terms of dialogue and voiceover,” he said.

Brown explained that while it was a team effort by his class to pitch ideas, it was Griswold’s final version of the script that was submitted, since only one script per team was allowed.

The contest specifically stated that the production company wanted a concept that was feasible and won’t be costly or difficult to produce. Griswold, who was “quite happy” to learn he was a finalist, said it took him about two days to write his script. While he didn’t think it would be selected, he’s excited that the script was considered for a PSA message across TV stations statewide to help save lives.

Griswold said it’s important to hear the road safety message at this time of year.

“Teens tend to celebrate more, which causes them to be distracted during driving — especially if they have a lot of friends in the car,” he said.

At Westfield High School, business teacher Nicole Stratton assigned groups of students in her marketing class to write scripts for the contest. Savannah Beach, Alena Rickson, James Fitzell and Kyle Fletcher worked as a team to write their script.

“I was really excited when I learned we were finalists,” said Rickson, a senior. “I felt like we earned it. I was really happy with our final script product — I thought it was really good.”

Rickson was responsible for incorporating their ideas into the script and writing the final version that they submitted.

The four, along with the rest of their class, watched PSA videos about not driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs or while texting.

“We got some ideas based off of what we saw, but we made it our own,” said Beach, also a senior.

In their script, a female teen is driving with her younger sister and brother as passengers. She crashes while answering a text about a party and her siblings are killed. When she wakes up in the hospital, a doctor tells her they died — and hands the teen her phone.

Fitzell, a sophomore who is about to get his learners permit, said they wanted to deliver a reality message with their script.

“People aren’t very smart when it comes to driving,” Fitzell said. “Reality is the best way to make people aware of dangerous driving. People will really listen to their emotions.”

Senior Kyle Fletcher agreed that the script showed the impact of texting while driving.

“You can’t sugarcoat it. When you text, you have the possibility of hitting someone or crashing into something and maybe killing whoever’s in the car with you,” he said.

Fletcher added that distracted driving isn’t something to take lightly. “It’s very dangerous and there are a lot of kids who text and drive,” he said.

The four said broadcasting a safe driving message aimed at a high school audience during prom and graduation season is important.

“It’s the end of the school year. High schoolers want to let loose — and maybe do more risky things that they wouldn’t have done earlier in the year,” said Rickson, who doesn’t drive a car because she has a “terrible” fear of driving.

She said when it comes to living or dying, teen drivers should always be as safe as they can when driving.

“Especially because you’ll probably have friends in the car — and that’s even more lives you’re putting at risk,” said Rickson.

Stratton said the four students demonstrated creativity and thoughtfulness in bringing attention to a very important issue. She said the entire marketing class did “a fantastic job” on their scripts, “I’m so proud of all my students. Their work was truly impressive.”

The entries from Agawam and Westfield are two of the seven finalists. The other five come from Dighton-Rehoboth, Gloucester, Northbridge and Plymouth North high schools, and Minuteman High School in Lexington.

All finalists will receive certificates from MassDOT and Fundación MAPFRE, as well as guidance on how to get their scripts produced.