Speaker Urges Students To Take Responsibility While Driving

By Eliza Hallabeck

Following Jacy Good’s graduation ceremony in May 2008, she got into the car with her parents. At an intersection, an 18-year-old male ignored a stoplight while on his phone, causing a truck to swerve and hit Jacy’s parents’ car.

Many things came together that day, Jacy explained during her “Hang Up And Drive!” presentation at Newtown High School on Thursday, October 11, to help her survive, but she has no recollection of the accident or of the following couple of months. Her parents, she was told later, died at the scene of the accident.

“I knew something really bad had happened,” said Jacy’s fiancé, Steve Johnson, in a recorded video during the presentation.

After trying to reach Jacy via text messages and phone calls, a woman from a hospital finally called Steve asking him for information about his then-girlfriend. Roughly half-an-hour later Jacy’s brother called Steve, with a long list of injuries she had sustained and the news that her parents were dead.

“That’s it,” said Steve. “I’m never going to see them, never going to talk to them, never going to hug them ever again.”

After researching what had happened the day of the accident, Jacy learned a paramedic living nearby had heard the crash. When the paramedic arrived, Jacy’s parents were dead, and Jacy was not breathing. If the paramedic had not come out or been home, she would also have died at the scene.

At the hospital, Steve said the doctors took to calling Jacy the “miracle child.”

While Jacy showed no sign of remembering Steve, whom she had been dating for roughly three years, she was progressing from week to week, he said. He told himself they were headed in the right direction, and two months after the accident Jacy was moved from the hospital to a rehabilitation facility.

She had to start learning how to read again at a kindergarten level, but showed improvement.

“We were just so, so lucky the way Jacy kept getting better and better all the time,” said Steve.

Still, three months after the accident, Jacy did not know who Steve was. Her memories told her she had two brothers, not one.

“It just destroyed me,” said Steve.

Then, three-and-a-half months after the accident, Jacy stood up from her wheel chair and remembered Steve. Within four months after the accident, Jacy was moved out of the hospital and living in her parents’ home. With memories of her parents surrounding her, Jacy found herself learning how to figure out her new body. It was at this point that she began looking up information from news articles about the accident.

She learned that both her parents must have been killed on impact. Reading about it, she said, was painful, and “cellphone, cellphone, cellphone,” kept standing out to her.

To this day, Jacy said, the 18-year-old contends he did nothing wrong that day, and does not take responsibility for the two lives lost, according to Jacy. The truck driver, too, was impacted from the collision, and has not returned to work in four years.

Hanging Up On Distractions

With “cellphone, cellphone, cellphone,” continually going through her head, Jacy said she began to research the impact using a cellphone has on the brain. When using a cellphone, according to a study Jacy found from Carnegie Mellon University, a driver has 37 percent less brain activity associated with the road before them.

“It’s hard to ignore your phone, but there are time when you need to respect others around you,” Jacy told the students.

In her effort to share the dangers of using a cellphone while driving, Jacy contacted her local representative in Pennsylvania to ask how she could help support the creation of a law. She was asked to speak in public to share her story, and at the time she was still dealing with learning how to speak again. Despite her fear, Jacy said she did speak, and was later asked to share her story on television with Oprah Winfrey.

Jacy said it is her hope to have cellphone use fall under the same category as drunk driving. Some states, like Connecticut, do have laws against distracted driving, but she told the students a social change needs to happen to help recognize the seriousness of the issue.

Every day, Jacy said, 15 people are killed because someone thought something on their phone was more important than a life.

Jacy admitted she would prefer her old life back, but, with that not possible, she has made it her mission to spread the information and help effect social change.

As Steve pointed out in a video for the presentation, when someone chooses not to use their phone while driving, they will never know if they saved a life.

With Jacy and Steve planning a wedding, Jacy said she has daily reminders that her parents are no longer there. Her father, she said, will not be there to walk her down the isle, and her mother will not be able to help her pick out a dress.

Steve said one in every four accidents in the country is caused by cellphone use.

Jacy asked the students to sign a pledge online at www.hangupanddrive.com saying they will not use cellphones while driving. She also said the students could sign up to follow her on Twitter and Facebook, and contact her if they need anything.

Local residents Scott and Gina Wolfman, of Wolfman Productions, oversaw bringing Jacy to Newtown High School last week.

“It’s pretty powerful,” Ms Wolfman of the presentation.

For every presentation Jacy makes, Ms Wolfman said she likes to think that at least one life is saved.

Jacy gave multiple presentations on Thursday, including an evening presentation that was open to parents and students who were not able to see it during the day. The program was sponsored by the NHS PTSA.