(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall.

The Wood County Museum and Safe Communities of Wood County will be holding their second annual Safety Fair and Cruise-In event on May 18th.

We're gonna be joined by Annette Wells, Marissa Muniz Kolhoff from the Wood County Museum, and also Sandy Wiechman from Safe Communities of Wood County.

But we're gonna start out in this first segment with Marissa.

Marissa kind of set the stage, because obviously this is a big event on May 18th, but you guys have a whole list of events because I was looking at your website, your social media.

I mean, almost every weekend it seems, or during the week there's something going on.

So kind of give us an overview of what the museum does and a lot of these events you have coming up during the summer.

- Yeah, you know, we have a bunch of things planned out at the museum.

As you know, last year we couldn't have too much planned because our building had flooded.

So we hit the ground running here for 2024 and have a bunch of things planned.

You know, we have our Tea and Talk series, which is afternoon tea in a program.

This weekend, we just wrapped up having a living history reenactment event called, "Early Ohio on the Portage," and it spans from 1700 up until the Civil War.

So we have all these different kinds of events and the Safety Fair just happens to be one of them.

- Yeah, well, and the thing was, we were talking too a little bit, the fact that obviously with the museum, a lot of these things are designed to be outdoors.

The weather being really unpredictable this spring.

- [Marissa] Yes.

- I mean, obviously you got a dose of probably what it was like living in the Black Swamp over the weekend with that event.

But you do have a way to modify things or you have a Plan B.

So if the weather isn't exactly perfect, most of these events can still take place.

Correct?

- Yeah.

You know, we have several outbuildings on the property.

They're original buildings to the Poor Farm Infirmary site.

And so we have those cleared out that they're just nice, open spaces that if we need to, we can modify an event and take it indoors.

We had to do that this past weekend with our Lady Brandeberry's Ball.

It was originally set to be out in the parking lot and then 6PM on Saturday, that big rainstorm rolled in and had to move it inside of our hog barn, which is a nice big open space.

- Yeah, now, obviously when you look at these different events and there's an a huge list of them, you have events that are, in this case, like these weekend events, but then you have series that run pretty much through the summer.

- [Marrisa] Yes.

- Sometimes through the year.

And then there are the special events.

You set up the special sort of packages, like you'll highlight a particular time in Wood County history and have an event that will last several months.

So, just talk about some of the series you mentioned, the tea event, things like that, that reoccur in some cases.

- Yeah, so like one of our reoccurring events is our Music at the Museum event.

It's a fairly new event as well, but we always try to somewhat have a tie either back to Wood County history or to our Poor Farm site.

And that Music Series event is one of those.

We have these beautiful large porches on the museum.

And on our east wing of the building, we have these big, beautiful porches and we put bands up there in the summer and they play right on the porch.

You can bring your own lawn chair, come out.

It's a free event for the community to enjoy.

But we do know that in the past, the Infirmary residents also enjoyed, you know, different things.

So we thought, you know, we know they sat out here on the porches and they enjoyed playing games, cards, those kinds of things.

So it's kind of just a tiny little touchback to history with the music series.

- Yeah, and one of the things I know when you go to the museum, obviously you look at the buildings and we know the origin of this was sort of the Poor House, the farm, things like that.

A lot of acres out there that are now dedicated to other things.

But you still have a lot of the original buildings and so you get that original feel for what it was like, the restorations of the buildings, that sort of thing.

So, you can literally step back into history and almost take a snapshot of any time in the history of Wood County.

Do you have people make a lot of suggestions about, "Hey, have you ever thought about doing this?"

- [Marissa] Oh, yes.

- Some of them I'm sure are realistic to think about.

Some probably are like, "Well, that would be nice, but."

- [Marissa] Yes.

- It's outside of what we can maybe take on.

- Yeah, you know, I've heard everything from like our overflow parking of, "Oh, why isn't this paved to, oh, the museum is kind of old and stuffy.

Why is there no air conditioning?"

Or, you know, I always have to remind people the building wasn't built to be a museum.

- [Steve] Sure.

- It was built, you know, to be a Poor Farm, an infirmary.

And we just happened to move in here afterwards.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- So those kinds of things.

- Sure.

And the expectations are too.

And on one hand, there probably would be instances where, okay, yeah, it'd be nice if you had control of the environment inside.

But the reality is that those buildings weren't designed for that.

And that's almost in a way part of the experience.

- [Marissa] It is.

- Let's face it, the people that were there didn't enjoy air conditioning.

And some of the things that we kind of take for granted now.

When you look at some of these events, because obviously you span things, I know they're like agricultural events.

There are things like that, all these historical reenactments.

And I noticed where we start to talk about the Safety Fair, that's gonna be a lot of first responder equipment.

- [Marissa] Yes.

- Things of that nature.

How do you go about recruiting for that?

I mean, there obviously are organizations that do antique farm equipment, do other things, but you have to reach out to the community and get them involved in these as well.

- We do, and you know, the idea kind of started with, we have two antique firetrucks in our collection at the museum.

We have a 1950s era pumper firetruck.

And then we have a very early like bucket firetruck.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

- So you pulled by horses kind of firetruck.

But when we decided we wanted to kind of start having an event like this, I knew Sandy from Safe Communities and so I kind of was reached out to her to pick her brain and she was all about it and jumped on board.

So, you know, that's just one example of how we partner with different community or different organizations in our community when we do things.

And we love to partner with people, so.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Well, and I think the nice thing about the museum is, as we mentioned earlier, you can take, there's always gonna be something that you haven't done yet.

- [Marissa] Yes.

- [Steve] Because let's face it, there's a couple of hundred years of history here to deal with.

Back before Wood County was Wood County actually.

So there probably is a supply of things like that because I know you've done things on World War I and you've done all of these other events as well.

So the nice thing about that is there are still people around that can either have collections of things that can contribute and then you can, of course, kind of update that, bring it up to modern times where people say, "Let's experience this.

Look at what it was like then versus how we would do this now."

- [Marissa] Yes.

- And then, the community events like this Safety Fair & Cruise-In coming up.

So there's always something to see.

- [Marissa] There's always something.

- And I know if you look at your website, you look at your social media, the list is pretty amazing.

And then you have outreach where people are going out into communities, into the libraries.

- [Marissa] Yes.

- Things like that.

And making presentations on behalf of the Wood County Museum as well.

So, yeah.

- [Marissa] Yeah.

- Quite an accomplishment.

Quite an array of things.

So I'm sure you encourage people to look online because there's always gonna be something new they're going to see.

- Yeah, visit our website and make sure to check out our social media pages.

We post a lot of updates on those as well about what we're doing, what's going on, where we're going, who you might see.

Those kinds of things.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Yeah, great, great.

Well, I appreciate you coming on to talk about this.

- Well, thank you.

- Coming up in just a moment, we're gonna be talking with Annette Wells about the events that are gonna go on, specifically, regarding the Safety Fair & Cruise-In.

So back in just a moment here on "The Journal."

You're with us here on "The Journal" and we're talking with folks from the Wood County Museum and also Safe Communities of Wood County.

Our guest in this segment is Annette Wells, the director of the Wood County Museum.

Thank you for being here today.

- Yes, thank you for having me.

- We touched on all of the things the museum does, but you have this special event coming up on May 18th called, The Safety Fair & Cruise-In.

So kind of bring us up to speed on that and what people can expect, what's going to go on that day.

- [Annette] Sure.

- And importance of it too.

- Absolutely.

So this is the second year.

This is not the inaugural year.

Hopefully, we've ironed some bumps out.

- [Steve] Okay.

Yeah.

- But this is the second year for this event.

It happens May 18th.

- [Steve] Right.

- From 11AM to 4PM.

And since the museum is a county entity, we're sort of centrally located in Wood County and we have a couple of safety vehicles in our collection.

- [Steve] The old firetrucks.

- [Annette] The old 1951 firetrucks.

- [Steve] Two firetrucks.

- [Annette] And then the, I guess, it's 1890s, the bucket brigade.

- [Steve] The old.

- [Annette] Right, yeah, yeah.

- [Steve] The old hand pump pulled by horses just like in the movies kind of thing.

- [Annette] Exactly, exactly.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- [Annette] Where the building's burned down.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- By the time you get to it.

- [Annette] By the time they get there, yeah.

- Yes.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- [Annette] And that-- - [Steve] Other than that, it was a good system.

- [Annette] Exactly.

So because of those, we thought, "Hey, we should have a Safety Fair."

And so, we have reached out to many safety and service organizations in and around Wood County and called in and said, "Could you bring a vehicle?

Could you bring a vendor?

You know, what have you got?

And come and set up on the property."

As you know, we have a lot of land out there.

- [Steve] Sure.

- And we will advertise to the community and come out and so these kids can see.

It's a positive experience.

I mean, nobody wants the firetruck or the police truck come to your house.

- [Steve] Yeah, usually not the best of circumstances when you need them to show up, yeah.

- [Annette] Exactly.

So this is a positive experience with these.

And also getting the kids interested in the stuff.

Some of them, they might be, you know, wanna aspire to be sure one of these things someday.

So I think it's really important to have these positive experiences with these different agencies that are there to help and as a service to the community.

And so, I think we have over 20 vehicles that are coming out.

Firetrucks, police cruisers.

We have some excavators.

We will have some farm equipment.

- [Steve] Oh, okay.

- So it's the whole arrange of stuff.

I know we're trying to even bring in a helicopter.

We'll have ambulances there.

The whole array of stuff.

We will, of course, have our antique, our two firetrucks out there as well.

And the idea is to come and check them out.

I know a lot of them, the vehicles will be unlocked.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- The kids can climb in.

Maybe they'll let you, you know, honk the horn or-- - [Steve] Turn the siren over.

- [Annette] Yeah, turn the siren, much to your parents dismay, make lots of noise.

- [Steve] Yep.

- [Annette] And check everything out.

We're gonna have bounce houses there.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

- [Annette] So your kids can have a great time in those.

We're also gonna have safety vendors under a tent.

They're handing out all kinds of information, emergency preparedness, stuff like that.

You know, what do you do?

You should have something in your house in case of, you know, bad storms or you lose power or something.

So things like that, that the parents should, you know, should kind of be taking into consideration.

We will have some food trucks on site if you wanna grab some.

- [Steve] Sure, while you're there.

- Some food while you're there.

I think even the bookmobile is coming from the public library.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- So, you know, just a great all around event and an opportunity to see some of these, some of them are huge, some of these vehicles up close.

- [Steve] Right.

- Get your selfies.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Get your selfies in the seat and check everything out.

- Well, I think the nice thing about that is you mentioned, in fact, you're gonna see all of this first responder equipment, this, you know, heavy equipment stuff.

And I guess for people, you know, seeing it up close gives you a better understanding.

So when you are following, when it's on the road, you realize, what a big piece of equipment is and why you need to make sure you're giving them space and the things they need to get to wherever they happen to be going.

And plus, as you said too, it's a very educational thing, especially for younger kids, but maybe even young adults who are like, "you know, I never thought about being a firefighter or."

- [Annette] Right.

- Maybe an EMT.

Now I see, you know, what it's like and talk to the people that are gonna be out there.

So it's almost like, in a way, a sort of a career fair sort of thing.

- [Annette] Yeah.

- In a certain kind of way as well.

- [Annette] Oh, I'm sure they'll be looking.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- ODNR is coming out.

I think Wood County Parks is bringing a vehicle.

We're trying to get every, all these different groups.

- [Steve] Sure.

- To bring a vehicle out and talk to people about this.

And all of this stuff is free.

It's free to check out the vehicles.

The museum is doing $1 admission the whole day.

- [Steve] Right.

- So it's gonna be a great time.

We're hoping, you know, I know it is May in Ohio.

- [Steve] Yeah, yes, so.

- So we could get anything.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- In terms of weather.

- [Steve] Right, yeah.

- But.

And unless it's a complete monsoon, it is happening.

- [Steve] It's gonna happen.

Rain or shine within-- - [Annette] Yes.

- [Steve] With a limit on how much rain.

- [Annette] Yes, yeah, yeah.

If there's a lightning, I think we probably can't have it.

- [Steve] But, you know, it's interesting too because, you know, and you mentioned it earlier too, that there's gonna be people there to help you with emergency preparedness.

Like dealing-- - [Annette] Yes.

- With severe weather situations because May, you know, we're getting through severe weather season, so being reminded of, "Hey, you know, you should have this in your house."

- [Annette] Some flashlights or something like that.

Know where that stuff is.

- [Steve] Yes, yep.

- [Annette] You know, just things that you need to think about at home.

- [Steve] Yeah, because I can remember, yeah, we've probably all done this.

You don't think about where the flashlight is until the lights go out.

- [Annette] Until it, yeah.

And you're searching around in the dark house.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- [Annette] Didn't I have it in this drawer or something?

- [Steve] Wait a minute.

- [Annette] Oh, no good batteries.

- [Steve] Yeah, no batteries.

Which, you know, it seems like a simple thing, but it's easy to forget.

And it reminds people too, of all the other, like, if you've got a smoke alarm, which you should have, if you've got a carbon dioxide, all of those things reminding you.

Check those things out, get 'em up to date.

And again, you're talking with people who know all of this, whether it's the vendors or the first responders.

So, you're gonna get accurate information, not something you just happen to pull off a website someplace that-- - [Annette] Absolutely.

- May or may not be telling you the right thing.

And again, it's, the nice thing about that is people get to see the first responders and meet them because-- - [Annette] Yes.

- Unfortunately, as we've talked about, usually when you're dealing with first responders, it's not the best set of circumstances.

- [Annette] Yes.

- If it's an emergency medical situation.

- [Annette] Very stressful.

- If it's a fire, yeah.

- [Annette] Or something.

- Yeah, and so you, that's the only time, unfortunately, some people come in contact.

This is a chance to meet them and understand why they do what they do and how good they are at it.

- [Annette] Absolutely.

- Yeah, so you can look very simply on the website, get all of this information and see what's going to be there.

And while they're there that day, is the rest of the museum also open then at that point as well?

- Yes, yes.

- [Steve] Okay.

- And we'll have, right now we've got three of the outbuildings that we open as well.

So, the asylum will be open.

- [Steve] Okay.

- The Pestilence House and the Ice House will be open.

So if you wanna go through and take a tour, like I said, we're doing dollar admissions all day.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- And there will be a kid zone outside.

So if the kids are really rambunctious and you need to wear 'em out, put 'em in the bounce houses, - [Steve] The bounce.

- For about a half an hour, take 'em over to the kid zone, let 'em play some yard games.

And then, when they're mellowed out, they can go through the museum.

- [Steve] Yeah, that'll be, yeah.

Then you send them to the asylum house and everything's fine.

- [Annette] Right.

- [Steve] You know, when you name those buildings, it's like, "Yeah, I really wanna see the Pestilence House."

I mean, that-- - [Annette] Yeah.

- [Steve] On the top of my list.

- [Annette] We have an iron lung in there.

- [Steve] Oh, there we go.

Now, see there's a most, a lot of people wouldn't know-- - [Annette] That's days gone by.

- [Steve] The purpose of that.

- [Annette] Kind of.

- [Steve] From polio days back in the '40s and the '50s.

Yeah, yeah.

- [Annette] Absolutely.

- [Steve] So again, I think every time you go there, you're gonna see something that you didn't notice the last time.

I think that's the nice thing about the museum.

- [Annette] Yeah.

- [Steve] So, good, good.

Well, thank you so much for coming on and good luck with this event on the 18th, and-- - [Annette] Thank you.

Don't do your rain dance.

- [Steve] No, no, I'm not doing.

- [Annette] Okay, save it.

- [Steve] No, no.

I think we got enough-- - [Annette] Save it for another weekend.

- [Steve] We have enough rain to last us through the month of May now pretty much already.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [Steve] So, great.

Well, thank you Annette, so much.

Coming up in just a moment.

We'll be talking about Safe Communities of Wood County back in just a moment here on "The Journal."

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal."

We're talking with representatives of Wood County Museum and also Safe Communities of Wood County, and that's who our guest is in this segment.

Sandy Wiechman.

Tell us about Safe Communities of Wood County because the name says a lot.

- [Sandy] Right.

- But I'm sure there's a lot more behind this.

- [Sandy] Right.

- So kind of give us the overview of what the organization is and then we'll kind of drill down into specific things that you do.

- Yeah, well, quick overview is, Safe Communities of Wood County has been around since October of 2012.

- [Steve] Okay.

- And what we do is, we do education and awareness about all of the traffic safety messages.

Click It or Ticket while you wear your seatbelt, drive sober, get pulled over while you don't drive impaired.

So many different impairments now from when we started.

Watch out for motorcycles and distracted driving are the big ones.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

- But in Wood County, we also, due to our problem identification, we work with mature drivers and youthful drivers.

- [Steve] Okay.

- And we throw in pedestrians and commercial vehicles just for fun.

- Yeah, so, pretty much everything traffic related that we encounter now.

- [Sandy] Yes.

- It's interesting you mentioned the fact that, you know, the things have changed about some of the issues you deal with in terms of things that can impair drivers now.

Education, obviously we're aware of alcohol as being an impairment.

- [Sandy] Right, right.

- But now, of course, we also have uses of other drugs like marijuana in this case, where now there is working our way through a legality usage thing.

- [Sandy] Right, yeah.

- Not just now recreational use versus medicinal use.

- [Sandy] Right, correct.

- So there's a lot of education to be done there, obviously.

- Right, yeah, I just had a big training last week about the marijuana impairments and the edibles and vaping and smoking and all of that.

And, you know, your head wants to explode with all of these new things you need to learn.

- [Steve] Right, right.

- So, but-- - And now, I know, and I'm not gonna ask you for a lot of statistics or any at all, but I know that we've done a lot more with distracted driving regarding people-- - [Sandy] Yes.

- Using their phones.

- [Sandy] Yes.

- Don't text and drive.

That sort of thing.

- [Sandy] Yes.

- The understanding is that we're seeing some improvement there, but obviously, not everybody is following the law.

- [Sandy] Right, right.

- Because we know that when we drive, you can still see people holding their phone up.

- [Sandy] Absolutely.

And it's-- - Doing this and looking at everything but what they're doing behind the wheel.

- [Sandy] Right, and it is grossly under-reported.

- [Steve] Okay.

- On reports and everything.

And, you know, I can tell you that, you know, only 4% of our crashes are distracted related, and then I laugh.

- [Steve] Yeah, because, yeah.

- Right, and no one's gonna say that they were looking at the deer, looking at the crops or whatever and ran into the ditch.

Nobody's gonna say that.

- [Steve] No.

- But we know that it's there.

- [Steve] Sure, sure.

- You know?

And whatever we can do to get people to stop doing that is what we need to do.

- Yeah, I think we've probably all experienced too, you'll be driving, following somebody, you can tell.

You know, they're a little left to center, then they're over to the right.

Back and forth.

- [Sandy] You know.

- And typically my response is to give them a lot more space.

- [Sandy] Exactly, exactly.

Thank you for that.

- [Steve] If something bad happens, you don't wanna be close to it.

- [Sandy] You don't wanna be close to it.

- When it happens, yeah.

- [Steve] But a lot of people don't do that.

And I think that's probably the one thing I see is that you really need to give each other more space on the road anyway.

- [Sandy] Right, right.

- But especially, when you see somebody who may not be paying as much attention as you'd like them to be.

- [Sandy] Right, and that's what I tell my kids and my seniors.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- "Well, I can drive okay."

Well, yeah, you can drive okay.

But I want you to pay attention to those around you.

- [Steve] Everybody around you.

- Who aren't.

- [Steve] Sure, sure.

- Yeah.

And like, it'll be a lot safer.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- But I'm still gonna come out there and say, you know, "Stop driving distracted."

- [Steve] Oh, yeah, yeah.

- Why is that phone call that important?

Why is that text that important?

It's not.

- [Steve] It's not, no.

- It's not.

And if it is, pull over.

- Yeah, exactly.

I think the funny thing is, and, of course, obviously if you're of a certain age, you didn't have a phone in the car with you.

- [Sandy] Right, right.

- And you waited until, because everything was landline.

Now.

- [Sandy] Right.

- We have this urge to be in an instant continuous communication with everybody.

- [Sandy] Everybody's got FOMO.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

Now, the one thing that now, and you didn't mention it, is there any education with how roundabouts work?

Because obviously-- - [Sandy] Absolutely.

- [Steve] There's still a large learning curve going on with those.

- [Sandy] Absolutely, there's a large learning curve.

- [Steve] Okay.

- You know, you get the singles mastered and then you get a double thrown at you.

But yes, we have education, get a hold of me and we can set up something for that.

Any item or topic that anybody wants to talk about in traffic safety, just get ahold of me.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- And we can make that happen.

- Yeah, because I know, and obviously, we're getting all of these different variations, the ones that have gone in along Wooster.

- [Sandy] Right.

- Near the university.

Near I-75.

- [Sandy] Right.

- You can still see that people are feeling their way through.

Those are like, "Oh, I needed to be in the right lane."

- [Sandy] Yes, yes.

- "Not the left lane."

- "Oh, I'm going all the way around for the second time."

- [Sandy] Yes.

- "How do I get off?"

That kind of thing.

- [Sandy] Yeah, right.

- So, yeah, yeah.

And I know that we're gonna see more of those.

- [Sandy] Yes.

- That's the new approach to intersection and traffic control at those.

- [Sandy] Correct.

- [Steve] When you go out in the community, do you get people who suggest, "Hey, have you ever thought about doing education on this?"

- [Sandy] Yes, yes.

- Just like I mentioned the roundabouts.

- Yeah, I do.

I get a lot of ideas and that's where I appreciate those in the public because there's programs that I've built on the senior center.

Some of my friends at the senior center are like, "Sandy, I don't get what's going on in my car."

- [Steve] Yeah.

- "What are all these buttons for?"

- [Steve] Ah, that's okay.

Yeah.

- And I've now become a certified trainer for AARP.

- [Steve] Oh, okay.

- And I have a program called, Smart Driver Tech, and we talk all about those things in your car.

- [Steve] All those-- - And it's a great, great program.

You know, we talk about the generalities, but-- - [Steve] Yeah.

- You know, we may call it one thing in one car, but one thing in another car.

But it all works together.

- [Steve] There's some application to all of them.

- Yeah, it all works the same.

- Yeah, yeah, because I know there's an insurance commercial where the guys, he's hitting things that everything's starting goes, "There's just a lot of buttons in here."

- [Sandy] Yes.

- And increasingly, with the computerization.

- [Sandy] Yes.

- And the touch screens and all of that.

- [Sandy] Yes.

- Yeah.

There aren't push buttons and rotaries, they're now-- - [Sandy] Right?

Right, it's just like-- - Soft touch screens and, yeah.

- [Sandy] Ah.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Which I wonder, and I know there's probably a lot of some research on this, is it, I wonder if it's safer now with touchscreen technology on your instrument panel versus if I turn a knob, I know it's versus-- - [Sandy] Right.

- Oh, wait a minute, I hit the wrong button here, I gotta keep doing this.

- [Sandy] Right.

And you have to be careful because you can do things in your car, but only by a touch.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- But what you learn, which is really interesting, is that a lot of this technology happens behind the scenes.

- [Steve] Sure.

- And you don't have to do anything at all.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- You know, I can turn off my lane assist, my lane centering.

- [Steve] Right.

- To keep me in that center lane.

And if you're a farm girl, that just-- - [Steve] Yeah.

- Drives me crazy.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- But the lane assist is great because if I veer out of my lane, "Hey, you need to get back here."

- [Steve] Brings you back.

Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah.

Lane centering, it's off in my car, but lane assist is on.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

- So, you know, there's different things at work and, you know, there's so many different things.

- Yeah, and I think one of the things too, and people have commented this, I know anecdotal things that, you know, you've gotten so used now to backup cameras and backup alarms.

- [Sandy] Right, right.

- That if you're in a car that doesn't have one.

- [Sandy] Right.

- You have a tendency to say, "Oh, I'm clear."

- [Sandy] Right.

- And then all of a sudden you realize, "Oh, there is no camera, no alarm."

- [Sandy] Right, right.

- "I've backed into something."

- [Sandy] Right.

And that's one of the first things I tell my seniors and anybody is, "You're still in control of your car."

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- [Sandy] "You still have power to override."

- [Steve] Everything in there.

- [Sandy] Everything in there.

You are still responsible for that drive.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

Now when you talked about demographics, do you do a certain amount of education for younger drivers?

- [Sandy] Yes.

- I know you mentioned older drivers.

- [Sandy] Yes.

- That's probably a totally different approach to demographics that are-- - [Sandy] Totally different ballgame.

Right.

- Yeah, a little older.

Yeah.

- [Sandy] Yeah, and I have got a great tool.

You know, I can talk all day to kids and it would be like, "Wa, wa, wa."

- [Steve] Yeah.

After wallpaper.

Sure.

- There's a program that I'm involved with called, Think Fast Interactive.

- [Steve] Ah.

- Amazing.

It's a game show, high intensity.

Music.

It's loud.

- [Steve] Ah.

- The kids love it and they win prizes.

They win a hundred dollars if they win the entire thing.

It's great.

We will be bringing it to Bowling Green High School, October 4th.

- [Steve] Okay.

- Right before homecoming.

- [Steve] Ah, that's a good idea.

- We just got done with it at Pena.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- And it's a great program.

And, please come out.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- October 4th and watch it.

It's great.

- [Steve] Yeah, and you're able to get through to them that way and they learn.

- [Sandy] Right.

- [Steve] Learn without even knowing that they're learning to something.

- [Sandy Right, and they don't know that, you know, we're throwing in.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- [Sandy] Little GDL laws and stop signs and speed and they're like, you know, they're jamming out to the music and it's like, "Oh, that was cool."

- [Steve] Yeah.

- [Sandy] You know.

- [Steve] And meanwhile, they're learning how to do all these things.

- [Sandy] Exactly.

Exactly.

- [Steve] Yeah, not bad.

Yeah.

- [Sandy] Exactly.

- [Steve] Well, and I guess that's obviously the challenge you have too, is to find ways to reach people, whether they're-- - [Sandy] Right.

- 75 years old or they're 15 years old.

- [Sandy] Right.

You know, and one of the tools that I'm using at the Safety Fair, it falls during Click It or Ticket.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

- So we're gonna have a Click It or Ticket kickoff, but I'm very, very proud that we have 13 crashes.

- [Steve] Okay.

- That we are honoring people for wearing their seat belts.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

Yeah.

- And I'm very excited that we're gonna be doing that.

We have local people who have been involved in crashes that were very serious this year.

- [Steve] Sure.

- And because they had their seatbelt on, they were prevented from-- - [Steve] More-- - They didn't pass away.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Or more serious-- - [Steve] Or incredibly serious injuries.

- Right.

- [Steve] Sure, sure.

- You know, and we do have some serious injuries coming in and I feel really bad, but they're like, "Sandy, we want to tell our story that we had our seatbelt on."

- [Steve] Yeah, and so even though this wasn't good, but it would've have been a lot worse.

- [Sandy] Right, it wasn't good, but it could have been a lot worse.

- [Steve] A lot worse, sure, sure.

- [Sandy] And we're gonna be doing that at one o'clock that day.

- [Steve] Ah, great.

- [Sandy] And I'm really excited that we're gonna be able to do that.

- [Steve] Okay.

Well, it sounds like people are gonna learn a lot that day.

And obviously, as you mentioned, all of these things are available year round.

- [Sandy] Right.

- [Steve] From your group as well.

- [Sandy] Right, right.

- [Steve] Yeah, good, good.

- And you know, we're doing the Click It or Ticket kickoff and you know, we'll do that and the Saved by the Belts and we're also, Northwood Police Department is coming down, we're doing child ID.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

Another very important day too.

- That day.

- [Steve] Great.

- So we will have that available for the parents as well.

- [Steve] Okay.

- So you can bring your kid in and your child in and get an ID card for them so you have it in the case of an emergency.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- We'll have the stickers for the car seats in case some of emergency.

- [Steve] Emergency.

Yeah, all about preparedness.

- Absolutely.

- [Steve] Yeah.

So thank you so much for coming on.

- [Sandy] Absolutely, thanks for having me.

- And obviously, a lot of things to talk about and-- - [Sandy] Yeah.

- As these things roll out, we'll have you back on to talk about as well.

- [Sandy] Oh, thank you, thank you so much.

- Great, great.

- [Sandy] Thank you.

- You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8PM on WBGU PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Goodnight and good luck.

(upbeat music)