Buckle Up, Buttercup

A team of students at Columbia High School recently won a contest sponsored by State Farm and The Center for Traffic Safety to design a billboard promoting safe driving. Their winning design in the No Excuses Youth Traffic Safety Billboard Design Contest encourages drivers to "Buckle Up Buttercup" with a message that "Seatbelts = Safety."

Advised by Jere A. Hill, the team was comprised of Mackenzie Burke, Ethan Schmitt and Stephen Huang. The design features a teddy bear buckled into its seat next to a red heart containing the billboard's message. The billboard is located off of Route 30 in Lancaster, near the Hawthorne Suites by Wyndham, 2045 Lincoln Highway East.

"This design was picked by two judging panels, one being student judges from York County schools and then a professional panel," said Tracy Linn of The Center for Traffic Safety in York. "More weight is put on the student judging comments, which included several explaining that they picked this design because the bear made them think of others, including family members, and that they should drive safer for (those family members) and themselves."

Hill noted that the team took the challenge seriously from the start. "Mackenzie, Ethan and Stephen are at the age where they and their friends are starting to drive or will start driving soon," Hill said. "The safety of using seatbelts was important to them. ... In the middle of a pandemic, they collaborated online and worked hard to create their design. I am very proud of them." For their win, each team member received $100, and Columbia High School earned a $1,000 grant.

Linn emphasized that focusing on safe driving for teens is paramount in Pennsylvania, where teen drivers have accounted for 22% of all crashes in Lancaster County in the last five years. Teen drivers were also the cause of 34 fatalities. "Based on crash data, the location of the billboard was selected due to the fact this in a high incident area for crashes involving teen drivers," she stated.

The billboard design contest has been a project of The Center for Traffic Safety for about 10 years, Linn noted, adding, "We offer this billboard in hopes that this peer-to-peer education resonates with teens. Who else better to learn from than your peers?"

Leave a Review

Leave a Reply