Student Makes Video On Dangers of Distracted Driving

(KNSI) – A high school student from Sherburne County made a Public Safety Announcement highlighting the dangers of distracted driving.

Zachary Knapp made the video for his senior project.

Knapp says he loves to work with video and editing equipment and talked about why he focused on distracted driving.

“Because it’s an issue that I see show up a lot in my community. Especially in my generation. As kids, we are very prone to distractions, and our attention spans get shorter and shorter every day. And texting and driving, talking while driving is very, very common.”

Knapp says distracted driving doesn’t always come from a phone.

“There’s a bunch of different forms of distracted driving. Distracted driving could be counted as impaired driving. so, I want people to have a little bit more thought before they do something simple that could end their lives in a car. Because really the seemingly simple task of even like reaching over to throw something on the floor. Like you’re done with your candy bar so, you throw the wrapper down, that could kill you.”

The high school senior pitched the idea to his parents and the Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office Towards Zero Death Coalition in March of 2020.

Knapp says he originally planned to use friends and outdoor venues but had to scale it down after the pandemic hit. So, he went back to the drawing board, thought of the ideas, wrote the scripts. I found copyright-free music and royalty-free sound effects.

He sent his ideas to the Towards Zero Death Coalition, and they tweaked the message a little.

In the fall of 2020, Knapp used his family for the video and shot the PSA using his iPhone. The video was filmed in the family kitchen.

After final approval, the PSA was uploaded to YouTube and shared by law enforcement.

Knapp goes to Spectrum High School in Elk River and will go to the University of Saint Thomas in St. Paul to study journalism.

You can see the video below.