Teenagers scared straight by road crash re-enactment at AANT Street Smart High program

Hundreds of teenagers who will become the Territory’s next generation of drivers were faced with a shocking, true to life, re-enactment of a road crash – as the NT death toll hits 25 this year.

With NT road deaths four times higher than at this same time last year, hundreds of high school students watched a “terrifyingly accurate” road crash rescue re-enacted before them.

Real life first responders acted out a high-impact car versus motorbike collision on Thursday, with a demonstration of the jaws of life rescuing a trapped, howling ‘passenger’.

The troubling re-enactment at Darwin Convention Centre was part of Street Smart High, a day of road safety education organised by the Automobile Association NT (AANT) with local emergency services.

Car crash survivors Eli Murn, Blake Wilson and Holly Scott each shared their stories with the high schoolers. Picture: George Yankovich

More than 1300 students from around the NT attended AANT’s Street Smart High road safety presentation, featuring a re-enacted crash with actual first responders. Picture: George Yankovich

More than 1300 teenagers from across the Top End, many just old enough to begin driving, filed into a packed hall as survivors and grieving relatives shared their stories.

Event presenter and crash survivor Holly Scott, 28, told the young crowd that “everything about (the re-enactment) was accurate”.

Ms Scott spent years in rehabilitation after surviving a 2017 crash in which her body was “left broken”, having overcorrected her car and slammed into a tree.

“The screaming, the sounds, the metal-on-metal being cut, it was exactly how I remembered it,” she said.

After the event, Essington School student Theo Murphy, 15, said he would never forget to wear his seatbelt.

“It’s just such a simple thing and I don’t understand why some people don’t do it,” he said.

A scene from the re-enactment showing ambulance personnel treating a motorcyclist struck by an oncoming car. Picture: George Yankovich

Ambulance and firefighters work to extract a screaming, injured “passenger” while another passenger lies dead on the road, having flown through the windshield. Picture: George Yankovich

Amputee Blake Wilson told students about how the last thing he remembered before waking up in a hospital bed was “putting (his) motorcycle gloves on”.

Seven years ago, the 27-year-old was riding home from his friend’s house in Palmerston when a drunk pedestrian stepped in front of his bike.

“I was outside my friend’s house, got on my motorbike, and then I woke up in hospital throwing up,” Mr Wilson told the NT News.

“Sometimes I’m honestly glad I don’t remember anything from it – it was like a time-jump.”

The nerve pain in his injured left arm became so unbearable he eventually chose to have it amputated.

Students in the foyer talking to road safety stallholders. Picture: Supplied

He said he holds no anger toward the 42-year-old man who was killed after walking into his path.

“Everyone in their life will make a silly decision on the road … you can’t be angry at someone for making a mistake,” Mr Wilson said.

“It was probably one of the few cases where I did nothing wrong and it still changed my life.”

With 25 lives lost on the Territory roads this year compared to just four at the same time in 2023, Assistant Police Commissioner Matt Hollamby said first responders were “secondary victims” of the carnage they witnessed.

AANT chief executive Simon Matthias said the rising death toll was “unacceptable” and he hoped young drivers will walk away “making better decisions”.

“If we stay on this path, it will go up to sixty lives lost this year,” he said.