Owsley County High School students learn dangers of impaired driving

Owsley County High School students got a warning aimed well beyond one assembly period: one careless drive, one text, one ride with the wrong driver can turn a routine trip home into a tragedy on the county’s narrow roads.

The school hosted Operation UNITE’s On the Move program, a prevention lesson meant to show students the dangers of impaired and distracted driving before a crash happens. The district said the effort was supported by OCHS FRYSC, PRI and Operation UNITE, and its live feed thanked those partners for bringing the program to students.

Operation UNITE says On the Move is a free, five-part drug education and prevention program offered through a partnership with the Kentucky Army National Guard. It is designed for students in seventh and 10th grades and uses hands-on experiences to show visual impairment, the brain’s reaction to impairment and the body’s physical response. The group says the program launched in the fall of 2013 and, through June 30, 2024, had reached 58,184 students in 50 counties across Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

The lesson lands in a county where every risky decision can carry outsized consequences. Owsley County had 4,051 residents in the 2020 census, and the school district describes itself as a small rural Appalachian district in Booneville serving roughly 600 to 650 students. The district also says 80% to 85% of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, underscoring how closely tied school safety efforts are to the daily lives of local families.

The prevention message is not limited to alcohol or drugs. Operation UNITE’s materials say students take part in a simulated impaired driving experience, or SIDNE, a battery-powered go-kart exercise that mimics the effects of distraction and impairment from alcohol or other drugs. Kentucky highway safety officials also use a 3-D drunk, drugged and distracted driving simulator that can include a cell phone to show how quickly attention breaks down behind the wheel.

That concern is not abstract. Kentucky’s graduated driver licensing program is intended to reduce crashes, injuries and fatalities involving teen drivers, and state highway safety officials said distracted-driving collision data showed 5,503 crashes in 2025, including 18 fatal crashes, linked to distraction. In a county where students often travel curved, hilly roads and emergency response can take longer, the lesson was clear: put the phone away, refuse to ride with an impaired driver and make the safer choice before the road turns dangerous.