As a new school year has begun, Custer County sheriff Dan Osmond took time to visit with KCNI/KBBN radio about driving safe in and around school zones. Osmond stated that the most important thing a driver can do anytime they are behind the wheel but especially when driving in and near school zones is to be focused and simply pay attention to what is happening in front of and around you.
“I think the first thing or probably the most important thing is just paying attention. I think almost every time I come out here and talk we talk about when you’re driving and how we just need to pay attention to what’s around us. You need to focus on driving not anything else. Cell phones are obviously a big issue when people drive. Put that cell phone away and pay attention to what’s on the road. When you are getting into that school zone you are going to start seeing kids crossing the crosswalk, cars turning, people picking up their kids, dropping off their kids, so there is just a whole lot going on. It’s just slow down, pay attention, take a little bit of time and just watch out for things. It’s simple, thirty seconds out of your day isn’t too big of a sacrifice to keep everybody safe.”
Osmond also serves as D.A.R.E instructor for Custer County and will be visiting area schools this year to roll out this year’s program. This year millions of school children around the world will benefit from D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), the highly acclaimed program that gives kids the skills they need to avoid involvement in drugs, gangs, and violence. Osmond says the D.A.R.E program and curriculum has changed a bit over the years.
“I think we are on the third version of what D.A.R.E has put out called the “Keeping it Real” program. You still talk about drugs a little bit but they focus now more on decision making, how to make good decisions. We have the D.A.R.E decision making model. It’s four steps that we teach the kids. The thought process is if you know how to make good decisions then when it comes to drugs and things of that nature you will make a good decision. So we do talk a lot about that so it’s pretty interactive class.”
D.A.R.E was founded in 1983 and has proven so successful that it has been implemented in thousands of schools throughout the United States and many other countries.
