According to the National Organization for Youth Safety, in 2008, nearly 13,250 lives were saved from wearing seat belts. An estimated 17,402 lives could have been saved if everyone wore a seat belt.

The De Soto High School SAFE team is looking to improve these statistics.

“SAFE stands for Seat Belts Are For Everyone,” senior Jessi McEndree said. “But it’s not just seat belts. It’s distracted driving, stuff like that.”

SAFE has been a committee at DHS for about three years and is run by LITE team.

“The last two years before I took over, it was run by Mr. Joe [Kordalski] … and then they asked if I would be interested in doing it. We found out about it in October,” SAFE team organizer Jennifer Sosna said.

Starting in January, SAFE has been organizing monthly activities and ways of promoting driving safety.

“We had the SAFE event where people could wear the dark goggles and go through an obstacle course [to simulate being under the influence] and then they could fill out a pledge card. Last month we had a seat belt contest where Seminars made a poster. This month we’re having a safe driving bingo,” Sosna said.

At the most recent event, Safe Driving Bingo, students were able to get out of Seminar to play bingo for prizes to promote driving safety.

As well as having events for students to participate in, each month SAFE sets up a booth during lunch time where people can fill out pledge cards.

“Each month we have a prize winner of $25 who pledged to wear their seat belt and make good choices when they’re driving,” Sosna said.

One major issue SAFE is looking to spread awareness about is texting and driving.

In 2011, 23 percent of car wrecks were related to texting and driving, according to NOYS. That’s 1.3 million crashes.

“We have Wednesday hallway safety, where if you get slapped with a card you ‘get a ticket’ so you have to go talk to Officer Leiker,” Sosna said. “It’s really funny because some of the kids are afraid that they’re really in trouble. We’re just kind of trying to make fun of the fact that when you’re walking distractedly, you’re probably driving distractedly.”

According to Sosna, DHS has seen a 96 percent compliancy from students towards wearing seat belts. SAFE is looking to spread this compliancy and their ideas to other schools throughout the state.

“We’re taking videos and sending stuff off to the state. Nobody else in the state of Kansas is doing what we’re doing, and they’re really excited about it. It gives other people ideas to what they could do, [to] make light of a situation and make conscious of it,” Sosna said.

SAFE will also be conducting a safe driving campaign in the weeks prior to prom and is hoping to carry over their ideas to future years.