August 25, 2025 • 58 mins
Melissa and Peter McGuinness lost their son in a car crash - and now they’re on a mission to stop it happening to someone you love. In a raw conversation with Gary Jubelin, the parents open up about life after the car crash that killed their 18 year old son Jordan and four innocent people. Instead of being crushed by grief, the parents are channelling their pain into You Choose - a movement that’s reached hundreds of thousands of young Australians. Road trauma isn’t an accident - it’s preventable, and every choice matters.
Find out more about YouChoose here.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see aside of life. The average person is never
exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes in the contact with crime is
left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into
this world. In part two of my chat with Melissa
(00:48):
and Peter McGinnis, whose son Jordan died and killed four
other people in the car crash, we talk about their
lifelong mission to change the attitudes of young drivers. Given
what they had been through, I found it quite amazing
how they not only came to terms with what happened,
but also their outlook on life, and they are now
doing everything in their power to ensure that lessons learned
(01:09):
from Jordan's actions are not lost. I honestly don't know
if I would have the courage to not only face
what they've been through, but having the ability to turn
something so tragic into something worthwhile. If you have young children,
I suggest you have a listen and maybe even get
your kids to have a listen, because what they say
relates to so many aspects of life and the choices
(01:30):
that we make. Melissa and Peter, welcome back to I
Catch Killers for part two.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Thank you very much, thanks for having us again.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Well, I've got to say for part one it was
very informative and emotional on talking about the experience of
what you went through when your son Jordan involved in
that car crash in which four other people were killed
along along with Jordan, and came across first of all,
(02:02):
how well you guys have coped with it, like emotionally
and dissecting all the mixed emotions you went through with
the loss, the tragedy, the pain. But you also carried
carried the guilt and you talk about the guilt and
I just want to ask you, and we touched on
in part one, but where does that guilt come from?
(02:23):
Breaking it down? If you could just identify what that
guilt is about. Now, you said Peter in Part one,
logically we weren't responsible for the actions, but you're carrying
carrying that guilt.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yeah, I think it's it can't be broken down rationally.
I think it speaks to Melissa's point in part one.
I think she was using the term justifiers. It's you
you can justify or rationalize certain things. There's other things
that are deeply reflexive, visceral sort of feelings that you carry.
(03:02):
Had Jordan survived naturally, he would have been in prison
for a very long time.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
And these are thoughts that you've processed for it through
your mind yet, because that would have been a very
long time.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
So that's that's a guilt. You know, he paid the
ultimate price himself for those choices, of course, you know,
and we do do anything for it never to have
happened at all. But nonetheless that that guilt still sits
out there. While we do know rationally that it's not
something that we need to carry, it's something that you
(03:38):
do carry. And the rare times that you'll meet parents
that might have been through similar things, is funny how
often that that is just this feeling that just sits there.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
You know, well, I suppose it's that connection, that bomb
that you had with your children that Melissa, you feel
feel the same way.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
We can't put it down. From the day that he
killed those those young adults. That the weight I talked
about in Part one, that weight just sits so heavily
on us. I can't not wake up and think about
what Jordan did. In fact, a large part of our
life right now is all about what he did.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
That grief and I.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Talked about you, grief is one of those things that
you've got a ball of grief. And what happens with
grief is that the grief doesn't reduce, right, the grief
stays exactly the same. What happens is that life just
grows around that grief. And I still grieve grief Jordan
all the time. I'll never stop grieving with him. But
(04:35):
what we've learned to do is to live with that
grief a little bit better and to pick it up,
to carry it, to nurture it. And what do you
do with that grief? And that's I guess what has
resonated with Peter and I that we're going to pick
up that grief. We're going to nurture that weight, and
we are going to make this world a better.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Place with that weight that we carry. Just what else
can you do with it?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Look, there's a sense of deep eated sense of accountability,
responsibility that is beyond us. It's not about us. It's
actually about we've got this set of circumstances. What does
it mean to other people? How can this apply more
(05:20):
broadly into the community. Because this whole, all the elements
of road trauma are ostensibly preventable, and I guess we'll
go into this later, but the fact that we've had
the perspective that we've got tragically, it should mean something
for other people. It's not about necessarily just about our
(05:42):
journey and our lived experience. It's actually about what that
lived experience can and should mean for other people.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And we all can look in the mirror and see
these said the circumstances are not unique to yourselves, and
that could happen to other people. I think setting part one,
that was about three or four years after the accident
that you decided to start making making a difference and
getting out there and getting a message across.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
How did that occur?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Was it a light bulb moment that you thought we're
going to do something positive with this. How did it evolve?
Speaker 4 (06:21):
It was certainly in a light bulb. Mate was something
that we felt. We felt that we wanted to do
something a long time. For a long time we thought
about it, but we didn't know what to do, how
to do, how to put your head above the radar
and even talk about this. How's it going to be received? So,
by the way, I'm just going to pick up on it.
(06:41):
You said an accident. Jordan didn't have an accident that night.
An accident is what happened to his victims.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
And I was like to.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yes, about valid point, And that is a slip of
the tongue with myself in preparing for this. And I'm
glad you picked me up on that because I started
writing this motor vehicle accent. But I've been consciously trying
to call it a.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Crash and you have and I yeah, and I We're
really taken, yeah, very big on that the accident happened
to Jordan's victims.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Jordan's was a choice.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
So getting back to your question, So, in twenty seventeen,
I met a lovely She was a police officer at
the time, Constable Tracy Cluston. She was running a Save
Day road safety expo at a school on the Gold
Coast and she just said, you know, would you like
to come and contribute?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And I said, I really would like.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
It was the first opportunity to go, all right, we'll
try something. So I spoke for around about twenty four
minutes that day, and at the end of it, I
had never public spoken. I was so nervous and I
cried a lot. I couldn't even work the PowerPoint presentation.
I had a friend, you know, that was clicking through
it because I was so nervous. And at the end
of it, quite a few of the students came up.
(07:51):
A lot of the responders that were there, the police,
the ambos, and the fieries came up and they went, wow,
that was that was really powerful. And the reason that
it was powerful, and I knew that what we should
be talking into is Jordan's choices. There are no excuses
for what Jordan did that night. He made choices, and
that's what we talked into, and it was quite confronting.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
We then did a.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Couple more of those Save Day expos with Senior Constable
Tracy Cluston. And I sort of thought, well, I'll just
you know, I reached out to some of the parents
that I knew and the teachers in the community and
see if we could go and I could just go
and talk myself at schools, and that's how it started.
So we didn't necessarily sit down with a business plan
and go, RITYO, this is what we're going to do.
(08:34):
It started out very, very organically. I was working five
days a week when we started out, and I had
this lovely boss who allowed me to go to four
days a week, so I would have one day that
I would go into schools and do a presentation, and
bit by bit the.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Programs sort of emerged.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
So where we started and where we thought we should
be was not where we are today. So for the
last we've been going for I think we're in our
ninth year now. I think we really formalize this in
around about twenty nineteen. I left my career in twenty
twenty and we went full time.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
With You Choose.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
But we learned very quickly that we didn't have the answers,
that the answers resided in this current generation, and that
the idea was not to teach, but was to extrapolate
the solutions from this current generation, synthesized them, and redeliver them.
(09:33):
You know, so I E and I say this in
the presentation today. You know, for me, it's not a
teaching paradigm. For me, it's a learning paradigm. Your generation
is showing us how to make this really powerful. And
that's the truth we've really learned from this generation.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, that's a really good summation of how the trip
has been because I think from the very outset it
won't be newsed to you Gary that school based or
community policing it's constructive to have a bereaved person to
talk to kids about choices and consequences.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, and I think that was very much I guess
the role if you like, very early on in the piece.
But it was really interesting to us that right from
the outset, the type of responses we were getting verbatim
from kids themselves, also from teachers and parents, but particularly
from the young people was that they don't always immediately
(10:33):
envisage themselves as a victim of anything. And that's a
bit of a hard nut to crack, apparently we found
out from teachers and team behavioral psychologists, but there is
they can actually see themselves all hang on and we're
all holding a mirror up to them. So what was
initially like a concept, I guess, which is a bit
(10:54):
like storytelling, Well we'll just tell people about these circumstances
and that will be enough. Really quickly became something that
we were noticing that put kids into a really authentic
state of reflection about themselves. So what started off being
a story about the circumstances surrounding Jordan's crash actually became
something that was an exercise in self reflection. And that's
(11:16):
this verbatim feedback loop we're getting from participants.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
How did you create that? How did you deliver that?
So you've got a group of school students there, they're
all misbehaving, the teacher calls them in the line and OK,
these people are turning up to speak to you. How
do you break the story down?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Well, funny, it's a stude of you to say that,
because the number of times it happens to this day
that we'll have teachers telling us. And by the way,
we also that the program is also delivered to various
other community organizations well even as adults these days, as
occupational health and safety course because the principles apply it.
But we've so often had teachers that will apologize in
(11:57):
advance for their cohorts, So I'll say, look, I've got
apologize for this mob. You know, the buggers, they're likely
to be disruptive. We have never, ever, ever had a
disruptive cohort go through this program, not once, and it's
been delivered in every state and territory I think now,
and to many, many hundreds of thousands of kids over
(12:18):
all these years. And you can hear a pin drop
throughout the presentation phase of the program, which is sixty
minutes every time, and we're learning more and more about
why that is. As Melissa says, it's not something that
we've got all the knowledge on, but because of that
response to our content, we're deeply curious as to why
(12:38):
kids lean into this. So year on year on year
we've learnt and we've maintained this curiosity about why these
messages are working. And with the help of some fantastic
voluntary well being and pastoral care educators, team behavioral experts
and so on like, we've managed to refine the feedback
(13:00):
that we're getting from the kids into a program that
has become more and more deliverable and measurable beyond just
the storytelling.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Okay, And I was going to say, I think obstensibly
the program is designed the first half is very much
about the backstory. That's what gets him into the deep
state of personal reflection. And the second part is we
know what we can't do anything. There's nothing that we
can really do.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
This is all about what you do.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
So you're feeling it now. You're feeling like you do
anything to protect the people that you love. And I
use this particular example, and it's probably the best example
I think that I can use for you choose. And
it came from a conversation with a young man and
we were talking about, you know, at the end of
a presentation, young men particularly come up and they want
to have a chat and it's often you know, the
big rub rough and rugged Apex sporting lad and we'll
(13:46):
talk about, you know, the feelings you have when you
run out onto a sporting field. You know, you do
anything to protect your mates out on that sporting field.
You die, fight, kill, anything to protect your mates, and
you're admired for your leadership and your protection attributes those
same young men who are doing anything to protect their
mates out on the sporting field, can then get into.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
The car or other areas of their lives.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
And in danger their mates that they were doing anything
to protect over here on the sporting field.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Protection and leadership is in you.
Speaker 5 (14:13):
How do we extract that.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Or how do we synthesize harness that and bring that
into the car and all those decision making moments. So
that's the sort of a little bit of here you go,
you're feeling those feelings. Leadership and protection is in it,
You exhibit it in so many areas.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Of your life. How do we harness that in those moments?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Just that by way of an example, I understand the
mentality of a young man in a football environment and
all that. Yet we're going to protect, We're going to
back you up, fight and then flip it. Well, why
do you lose that when you get in the car.
You choose? Just break it down. What's the aim of
you choose?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
So the mission is very much about creating social purpose
behind the changes that are necessary, not just in road
use culture, but in harm prevention culture in general. So
the idea Melissa touched on it before, it's not actually
(15:12):
a teaching paradigm. It's not like we've got all the answers,
and the challenge here is to put the answers into
the participants or into teenagers or the community in general.
It's very much a mutual compact here where through sort
of mutual reflection we understand and our wheelhouse is road trauma.
(15:32):
So it's the context that we use, and it's a
good one because most of these kids are either drivers
or passengers talking to you. So once we put aside
these legacy myths that we've had around driving and road use,
but in fact, in harm prevention in general, like for
a hundred years, about making the connections between intentions, choices,
(15:56):
and actions and the people that we most protend, profess
to want to love and protect. To explain that, Gary,
you just said it at the start of part two,
you use the term accident. An accident is reflexive. We've
been calling these things accidents since cars first arrived on
our roads, and the nexus there is that because we
(16:18):
didn't mean to cause it, therefore it's not our fault,
it's an accident bad luck. Right, So when you have
that embedded generationally, where road crashes, crashes are bad luck,
where things that you didn't intend to happen, but through
your choices, you harm other people. Are bad luck. You
didn't mean it. Gary, I can't tell you how many
(16:41):
times people will sympathize with us to this day, don't
they say? They'll look in our face and I'll say, oh,
poor Jordan, we've all done it.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Yeah, that was a conversation I have with and.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Maybe we've got a lot of work to do while
that's still happening. And it's a reflex that people have
because if Jordan had have done what he had done
to for other people with anything but a motor vehicle,
do you think anyone would be saying to us like, gee,
poor Jordan. You know, we've all done it. So we've
got this paradigm that we used to make ourselves feel better. Oh,
(17:16):
you didn't mean it. You crashed your car. You made
choices in your car that caused harm to yourself, which,
by the way, if you cause harm to yourself, there's
not a single person there. That person's got a family
that are dealing with grief and all that sort of stuff,
let alone harming other people. So as soon as participants
in this program get onto these really obvious dynamics that
(17:40):
will wait a second. We got control over these.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Things trying to try and I was fascinated by your
take on it and agreed with you one hundred percent,
changing the narrative from yeah and I can imagine those
words coming in other people's mouths saying to you, Oh,
we've all done it. You did stupid things when you
were young. We've got to change that, haven't we.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Well, the messages that go to young people are that
this is just part of growing up. It's part of life.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Crazy, silly, reckless young guys.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Recklessnes and look, we don't need the name, but we
would have all seen them, particularly when we were younger
and growing up. Where the type of campaigning that's out
there around trauma and road trauma prevention is about people
finding relatability with teens, and the easiest way to find
a relatability with a team is to tell them about
(18:35):
you as a teen. We think we know teenagers because
we used to be one, so it's common we see
really accomplished, highly intelligent people engaging teenagers by saying, geez,
when I was your age, I used to go to
the drive in the boot of the car, or I
used to ride on that in all of the reckless behavior,
and then the message at the end of it is yeah,
but don't you do it okay, So all they're hearing
(18:56):
about this is that everyone does it right. And then
the messages which are buy the way true, the neurological
messages that they get. You know, your brain's not fully
developed to be able to make informed decisions until you're
like twenty five, or you've got it impulsive until your
brain develops. Probably all that stuffs true. But when you
add that on top of our culture, which is this
(19:16):
mythological culture about bad luck not choices, you've got the
messages that you're giving to teenagers are just that it's
just a bit of a dangerous time to be alive,
and it's part of life to be making these really
reckless decisions that can harm or kill other people.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
When it looks so powerful in what you're saying, then
changing that narrative, I'd use an example, what's one that
the coward punch the King hit. That's a classic example,
really good one. It was a King hit. This bloke
got King hit, and there was no shame to King hit.
But once the terminology was changed on the back of
(19:52):
the campaign to a coward punch that really identified it
for what it is. And I take on board with
what you're saying about changing it from this accident because
that has all those connotations to a crash and why
did the crash happen that we'll lose a number of
led to that.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And as soon as you And that's why intentions, choices,
and actions are a part of the really important reflective framework,
because the truth is our Sudden didn't wake up on
the day that he did what he did with that crash,
going I'm going to intend to do all of this,
of course not he's a good person, pretty much like
anyone else that would attend to you choose program, But
(20:33):
his intentions mean absolutely nothing if his choices are harming
other people. And that nexus is really revealing to teenagers
and they lean into it because they've got these strong
protective instincts that Melissa pointed to before and that was
a great example, and to marry him up is really powerful.
(20:53):
By the way, this also works with adults. So you
could be in a room full of people when we
do this exercise really frequently where you'll say, by a
show of hands, how many people have seen a social
media post written in the first person to someone who's
passed away. Almost every hand goes up, you know, and
with the older people it's like hands up if you've
(21:15):
got or you've seen a tattoo on someone that's commemorating
someone that's passed away, you know, And that's beautiful thing
to express your love like that. But here's a challenge.
Move that love that you've got for your friends and
your family and your mates and put it right now
in the present. Because that person that you might have
(21:36):
been able to influence or help or just pull up
or call out, but you step back from it, they
can't now see your tattoo and they can't read that
social media post. So let's step all of that love
that we've got as mates, as family, Let's move that
into the hear and now and come up with ways
inside each of our social groups to put a side
(21:58):
passivity which we can speak too late, and start talking
to each other.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
One that one of the notes so I've got about
is don't be a passive observer in the situation. And
I like, again, I like the messaging that you're saying.
It's all very well after the event to say we
cared for your brother, you're one of us, and all that.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Rest in paradise. John. Yeah, it's too late. He can't
hear you, mate.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
But the message before he got in the car should
have been, mate, I love you. Don't get in the
carr and.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
This this is at the bottom of and by the way,
this isn't a theory that we've got. You know, we've
been in a regular one hundreds and hundreds of thousands
of kids.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Have you actually done hundreds of Ye.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
We just did thirty thousand kids a condensed version of
it at the B Street Arena of event in Sydney
just last week at Kudos.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
But over the years, the amount of the amount of
survey data that we've got, so.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
You've put some some of the data in research with
the universe.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. So we're really fortunate last year
that the Griffith University Criminals Institute actually did a randomized
control trial on the effectiveness of the program, which is
a bit nerve wracking of course, because you know they
can get out the end of it and it's not
as good as yeah yeah, but look, it's in peer
(23:14):
review now, so it's close to being complete. But the
initial evaluation has demonstrated that the program has a significant
effect on risk taking intentions and extrapolated behaviors inside teen
social groups, and it points to passive individuals inside social
groups being at high risk of harmful behavior inside their
(23:38):
social settings, which is very revealing to us.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Because let's break that down to talk a bit more
about that.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
We got curious about this, didn't we, Melissa, no, you please,
I know that we got really curious about this because
we there was a pattern that came out in our
post program surveys and in our anecdotal interactions with kids.
And it wouldn't matter what region we are in, what city,
what socio demographics, the number of times we heard comments like, ah,
(24:09):
I was just listening to that that that piece, and
I just it made me think about that time that
I just got into that car and I just knew
I shouldn't have, but I just did, you know? Or
And we hear that a lot. We often hear like
we like, there's three people in the car, two of
them are scared, one of them is doing something else,
the driver is not paying attention. You know this this
(24:31):
passivity and they recognize it in each other. And when
you see like the groups of friends, teenage friends talking
to each other. You're not necessarily looking at that determined
law breaker, that street racer, that motoring enthusiast type of person.
Maybe the program will not get through to a hardcore
five percent of people that are determined to break the law,
(24:53):
but that's not where most of the crashes generally come.
All sorts of people get involved in road trauma up.
So that level of passivity became really interesting. And like,
these are people that are best friends gary or or cousins,
people have known themselves forever, going oh, I feel like
I can't say something. I feel like I should say something,
(25:14):
but I can't. And it's not about turning every kid
into an angel, of course, but they'll tell you that
once or twice a year, maybe a few times more,
a set of circumstances will come up when they really
know that they should say something, but they feel that
they can't. So the bones of the program, or like
a big element of the program is to practice these permissions,
(25:38):
to give each other permission to call each other out
or talk to each other about this harmful stuff. And
we know we've got to.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
How do we make that cool for the kids? As
in they instead of being the person that if they're
at the school formal and someone's runs up to the
teacher to say, Johnny's about to get in the car
and drive, and then the kids would turn on that
can we change Do you think we can change that
culture around?
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah, it's a personal compact between two people, and that
the secret is to not make it prescriptive. So the
secret is to enable people to have these conversations and
to practice them throughout a school year, in schools or
whatever the community group happens to be, just like you
practice your footy or your musical instruments, because you make
(26:26):
all those linkages. We want to protect each other, We
want to look out for each other.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So give a I'm talking in a class, create a
hypothetical situation. How would you react to this?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Fether or how would you react to this?
Speaker 5 (26:37):
I actually think that that's the magic dust of you choose.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
So we talked about it in part one that what
we hope to achieve through our program is that when
we come in and we do our component of storytelling,
the first part is about breaking down the teens. The
second part is about building them up. This is about
what you can do inside your social eco systems to
protect yourself, protect your mates and the people that you love.
So the magic dust, I think is that ability to
(27:04):
whilst those teens are in that deep state of personal reflection.
I talk exactly about that. You know, one of our
biggest take homes is if you get nothing else out
of today when you walk out these doors today, if
you love your mate, give them permission today to call
you out on your potentially poor behaviors in advance of
(27:26):
those moments that matter.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
So don't wait till.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Two am when you're at that party on a Saturday
night and everything's going sideways. Don't wait till then to
have that conversation.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
It's too late.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Had the conversation today. I know as teenagers, I'm watching
my sixteen year old go through it now. It's hard
to have those conversations. You're not allowed to have those conversations.
This gives the teens the ability to walk out have
the conversations today, get in advance of those awkward moments.
Have the awkward conversation today. You're feeling it, you're feeling
that protection and that love that you have for each other.
(27:59):
Now is your time to talk about it, so that
when that moment comes next Saturday night or whenever it is,
you've had that conversation. So it might work for everybody
on that day, but it might give the kids the
ability to start those conversations that they don't know how
to start or they're not allowed to have. It gives
them permission to go.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
It just it provides a social context.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
And why isn't that we feel like we can't speak
up in those moments.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Let's break that down.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
The study is interesting because, and this is not to
pull apart one set of circumstances, but if you were
just to use a car with five people in it,
we usually operate on a binary that says, if the
driver has caused a crash, then we've got a perpetrator
and four victims. That car is actually a social ecosystem
(28:49):
following people. Five people in that car, Now they won't
always be in the same social group, but if two
people in that car have got this predisposed, I'm not
going to feel like a dickhead if I say something
I've already told you in advance. If you're my best mate,
you're my cousin, you're a friend. Even this, we see
(29:11):
this work in school communities. This is the culture that
we've got. When we know we've got to say something,
we will. And this isn't about dobbing on the slightest thing.
This is about two people deciding between each other that
when I feel this compulsion and this is a carry
guilt about this, right, I feel this compulsion to say something,
(29:31):
but I feel too awkward to say it, Well, don't
feel awkward. Think if you think you've got to say
it to me, say it now. Then you're starting to
recognize that you've got this, That you've got social elements
at play to road trauma prevention that are in addition
to all that stuff that, of course we need, Like
we've never spent more on safer cars, we've never had
(29:53):
safer roads, we've never had more regulations more stringently policed,
and we need all of that. We need the driving
and the skills training. But the road trauma statistics are
not good. We may be having more people survive because
of the quality of the safety in cars, but in
some jurisdictions, in some age groups, the statistics are actually
(30:14):
heading in the opposite direction. So what are the elements
that we need to reinforce all this fantastic investment that
we're making, which, by the way, we need to keep making.
We're not saying this is a binary and that only soulture,
but those underlying factors that look at our road use culture,
which is what we were speaking about before, about accidents
(30:35):
versus crashes and intentions versus choices, and you overlay that
with these social compacts that actually give people permission to
act on their instincts to love their mates. It's funny
to protect and protect their mates. The number of times
we hear mums in particular that will contact and it's
every week, and like it's all the time. We'll have
(30:55):
mums contact us and say, well, I thought little Johnny
was going to a roads safety thing and he comes
home and he tells me, hugs me and tells me
he loves me. I haven't got a grunk out of
him for the last six months. Who would have thought
that so much of these messages from some of the
more unlikely kids. This is why I say that the
demographics are universal. Everyone loves someone usually, and particularly in
(31:21):
young people. Love and protection go hand in hand, those
protective instincts, and the You Choose program provides a framework
to build those habits out on top of those feelings
of love and protection.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And the way and you look at it as you
get older in life and you look back where this
real strength comes from, and you know, naively as a teenager,
you're thinking the strength comes from just being part of
the group and all that. But it's the people that
do stand up and call people out on their behavior,
like if someone's going to get in the car and say, no,
you've had too much to drink, You're not not doing
(31:57):
it that type of thing to make that acceptable. So
I'm finding it fascinating what you're talking about, like introduce,
let's see them hard, Let's see them with the love feeling. Yeah,
love and protection, this is what you're meant to do.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
Well, they're already feeling it from that first part. It's
very confronting to see that first part of the youtoose presentation.
And again, the power of Youtooe is to stand up
as Jordan's mother and own everything that he did, everything
that he did.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I make we make.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
No excuses for Jordan. I said it in part one.
Jordan would never have intended to harm the people that
he loved, the people that he most loved, his little sisters.
Yet it just doesn't matter what he intended to do.
All that matters is what he did. So they're feeling
that love. And you just touched on something before when
you were talking about changing one punch kills to the
coward punch. That's sort of a little bit of an
(32:48):
analogy of the example I used on the football field.
When they hear that language around road safety and they
think about you, well, I do do that with my
main I do protect him out there.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It gives them that.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Feeling of going, well, I will start to protect him here.
It's a little bit like that coward's punch. When you
change that wording.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
It means and it becomes a social purpose. This thing.
It's not Peter and Melissa own it and where and
we're putting it to you or giving it to you.
You own the YouTube's philosophies now, Gary, because we've spoken
about it. Everyone that participates in this is responsible for
this social change. Because preventable trauma is unacceptable. Something that
(33:34):
can be prevented through choices is obviously unacceptable. It's not
a part of life. And you'll hear people that have
been affected by road trauma say this over and over again.
It wasn't until it happened to us that we realize
we're just so flippant when it comes to this thing.
And while the fatalities are kind of stable climbing in
some way, there is not in others. We're still looking
(33:56):
at sixty seventy thousand serious injuries every year that a
life changing for whole families that simply should not have
to happen. You'd know forensic crash investigators that will tell
you that they've never seen a genuine accident in thirty
years on the job. Break it down for god, where
a tree falls out of a series of choices that
(34:19):
cause these things.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Just tell me, with the stuff that you're doing, there
seems to be we either of you teachers before this,
or there seems to be some academic research behind it,
or you mentioned Melissa, that came organically. But it's really
clear and concise messaging that you're delivering here.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
It's because it came from this team generation. We didn't
go there going we have all the answers. That's where
we started, and then we realized, wait, one moment, we
need to understand this generation, extrapolate the answers from them,
synthesize the messages, and deliver them straight back to the kids.
It's why it's so powerful.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
It's driven by the it's driven by the young people themselves.
So the answer is that, no, we're not teachers, but
we've had fantastic assistance and support over the years from
from policing first responders, but especially from professional educators who
are really curious about why this program work and assisting
(35:20):
us to put together, you know, the compact way that
we can get it out without being prescriptive. And this
is the balancing act. It's like, Okay, you've got to
enable the kids to find the to do these things
for themselves and to treat it like a social purpose
without teaching it at them, because if you teach it
at them and it's prescriptive, they won't take it on board.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
I should of call it feel and reveal you're feeling
it and you're revealing it to yourself.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Okay, that because the way that you're speaking to me,
it's just my mind sticking over and thinking, yeah, I
can understand how kids would buy into that and the narratives,
the examples that you're using, and how you're taking it
down letting them come up with the come up with
the answers. I want to sis we're talking driving situations.
(36:08):
Does do you think this type of education can help
for other issues that come with been a young person
in today's society, consent and bullying and different things like that.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
It's how we look out for each other, and in
fact that it's not just about teenagers, Garry. We're doing
piloting work on exactly the same principles with fly and
flyout workforce with their industrial safety, which is they've got
highly regulated compliance and safety. What more can we do
(36:41):
other than to make these rules and regulations as stringent
as we can make. Well, changing hearts and minds is
really important.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Well as the years of a police officer, rules can
the rules and regulations can only go so far.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
We had the arrogance in two thousand and seven am
to think that we had some teach or that just
sort of like sharing the story was enough. But the
more you dig into these dynamics, the more you realize
we've got so much to learn. So and and by
the way, every every generation changes. Inside two years, kids
communicate with each other completely differently inside two and three
(37:17):
years periods.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
You've got to evolve, how I know, part of the
aim and the mission was to deliver this message to
all schools across across the country. How how close are
you coming to getting that or what direction you're heading
that in that regards to get the message out to
all the schools.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Well, we're a fair way off being in every school,
but we are in every state and territory and we've
got many, many hundreds of schools across Australia. And like
we call it, it's a social mission. So we call
participants once they're finished, you choose mission advocates because it's
it's up to them inside there. It's up to them
inside their social groups. Even if it's just because drop
(37:56):
it in and correct, just keeps and that many kids
will come up and say what can we do? And
you know what, they're they're the best because they can
go to the school in the suburb of Oh my
cousin doesn't do this, she needs to do it, or
he needs to do it. Works great out in the
regions because out in the regions outside of the cities
that they're just determined to go. This whole region needs it.
I'll go we do every school.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Part of that mission, part of the actual presentation that
we do is a call to action that if you
like this, here is the call to action. This is
I'm handing over the baton to you to go and
do something. And we do a lot of parents student evenings,
and of course parents become our biggest advocates. I love
we love doing parents student because parents get it straight
(38:37):
off and they just go, wow, that really meant something.
Parents become the people that advocate for us. The teens
become the advocate. So we're actually essentially run through the community.
We don't really promote ourselves. It's through peer advocacity, through
teacher to teach, a student, to principal, parent to school.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Police, district of police issue. So parents are that good
because they'll often ask us, oh, my son or daughter
has just got their l plates, what should I say
to And of course our response is if we had
our time again, we now understand that by the time
you're having these social cultural discussions with your team, it's
(39:17):
a bit late. We need to be setting these examples
and this is what these future generations can do. By
the time you're putting your newborn into the capsule in
the car, so that when you get that speeding fine,
you're not able the kitchen table going those bloody cops.
They've been trapped me again.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Respect it.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
How about respecting that. It's not about lionizing people that
are sort of busting speed cameras all over the place.
It's about sort of understanding that unless you are a
determined law breaker, you haven't got the civic right to
drive however you want. And you need to show your
kids that don't set this cruise control at one hundred
(39:53):
and nineteen because you're convinced the cops won't get you
for less than ten. Show the kids that you're serious
about protecting them and protecting each other and other from
completely preventable harm, so that we don't perpetuate this culture
where the rules and frameworks that surround keeping people safe
(40:16):
on the roads are somehow separate from other law they're not.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Have the government brought into this in assisting you. Have
you had any support from government in delivering what you're delivering.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
We've not had government funding. That was disappointing in the
very early years. I can't like there's problems when you're
delivering something nationally across state orders, right because it's the
state transport departments that have usually got the funding to
assist with these kinds of things. But overall, Gary, I
think it may have been a blessing in disguise because
(40:54):
the communities themselves support this program. Schools are happy to
support the program and fund our ability to deliver it,
and in many respects that sort of empowers us to
be able to go on and be curious about different
methods and new methods and be a little.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Bit You're probably right there with if you get the
government backing that comes to restrictions, and it does, and.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I feel very much like that.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
There is a lot of government top down stuff right
now in education, but I don't feel like there's very
much grassroots from the bottom up. And I think that's
the role we've discovered that we play, and it's been
actually easier to just be able to explore that avenue
on our own without any restrictions from anyone. We've got
the ability to go in and understand this generation and
(41:40):
also to tick their boxes. Sometimes when you work with
the government, there's so many political boxes that you must
tick that sometimes you wind up. You know, you can
inadvertently untick the boxes of the teens. And again, I
think that's why the program can be so powerful, because
I'm not or we are not restricted to doing certain things.
I think one of the biggest things that I've learned
(42:00):
from the teens is that, for goodness sake, don't walk
in and make a seventeen or an eighteen year old
are where about road safety The second that I hold
up the fatal five, which is necessary, they must know that.
And I think awareness starts a little bit earlier the
second we start doing that, as the second they go, well,
I'm not going to listen to you now, because you're
now just telling me stuff I already know.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Therefore I'm not going to listen.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
So we're definitely don't present eachees as anything other than
complementary to everything else that it's out there. It's certainly
not a binary, but it does reinforce existing methods with
this sort of socio cultural piece that sits in underneath
all the other stuff. They absolutely must have.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Well, the power of your story, as we've talked about it,
it grabs people in teenagers are going to listen to it,
and they where you say teachers might apologize beforehand, the
kids are going to be disruptive. I think most kids realize, well,
this is not the time to be disruptive. When you
guys are up there telling your stories, in the delivery
(42:57):
of so many sessions, talking about what you're talking about.
How does it impact on YouTube personally?
Speaker 4 (43:04):
I think sometimes people assume that we are this big organization,
where not Peter works full time outside of YouTube and
then spends a lot of hours working on the strategy
with Youtubes. I do full time hours working inside the
school system. All of the bookings, all of the everything.
I do all of it.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
And we do a lot.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Of travel, so I spend a lot of time coordinating schools,
coordinating travel. It's actually, really it's really tiring, I would imagine,
and sometimes I feel a little bit personally like I
work off an emotionally empty tanking. I'm sort of up
and down all the time because what I do is
such an emotional and taxing profession. But I get this
immediate uplift from the teens right then and there. Sometimes
(43:49):
with some schools I might only get sixty minutes. Sometimes
I get ninety minutes. So we get this opportunity to
talk to teens and the conversations that come out and
then maybe those testimonials from teens later.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
It it sourishes.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
It feels my it feels my tank straight away. And
I got this beautiful message from a young man from
a Gold Coast school last week and he said to me.
He sent me a message straight afterwards, and it was
something along the lines I'm paraphrasing here, but he said,
you know that that was so powerful. My mates and
I we walked straight out. We did what you said
to do. We exchange those permissions and commitments, he said.
We all had a little cry. He then sent me
(44:24):
a message the following Friday night and he said, I
just want to let you know that we all hooked
up together for our you know, Friday night it's raining.
Ordinarily we'd go drifting tonight. We just said we're not
going to do that. We'll go do something else.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
That's the sort of thing. I can't stand up here
and go. You know, we've saved X amount.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
Of lives, But that is what inspires me to get
out of bed every single day. I know it inspires
Peter to go.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
There.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
You go, there's that one kid, all of him and
his mates consciously made a decision to go, We're not
going to do that.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
That's that social purpose.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
And I could give you so thousands.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
Examples of that and sometimes I will go to some
schools and I might have every single person hug me
on the way out, and I haven't done anything particularly amazing.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
They're just feeling.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
They're looking at me, going could I do that to
my mother? Or could I do that to my mate's mother.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
They're feeling it.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
But there's an optimism to us. There's this change energy
and it's actually not something that's necessarily cautionary. It's this
change impetus that you see well in different ways in
different schools. I guess to answer the question from my perspective,
(45:38):
all that we love to hear over this long arc,
and we hear this from many many schools where they
treat it as a cultural tradition. So the you Choose
mission is passed on from cohort to cohort. So you'll
have the kids incoming, kids in year twelve who have
done their youtubes in year eleven go talk to the
(45:59):
year sevens. This is how we look out for each
other and senior school, and by the time that you're
doing senior school, you're going to be the custodians of
the you Choose mission. And that's not about us, that's them.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
You're empowering them.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
And that happens over and we see it a lot.
And when you see that, this is this is what
the intention is. You guys, young ladies are handing you
own this social purpose.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
It's a smart, smart way of getting getting that message across,
isn't it. Because I'm just thinking when I was a
teenager a long time ago. But you rebel when you're
told to do something. Yeah, told not to do that,
I'm going to do it straight away. But once you
change the culture and the thinking and then you become
invested and it becomes your program.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Look if you step back from attempting to be relatable
with a sixteen year old and just being vulnerable enough
to go, here's.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
Some tools and let them, let them go.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Hey, this is an outrage. This stuff should this stuff
shouldn't be happening. It becomes their mission to change. Old
buggers are setting fire to the earth, we're destroying the drink, right,
So that's that's their response to it, you know, And it's.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Sell us out as the silly old fools, what will
we know and empower them to Well, it's so different.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
When all those pennies start to drop for all of
those reasons that we spoke about before, and there's a
multitude of them, but we're learning as we go how
to connect them all together and turn it into an
enabling program. Each school or each participant just takes on
board a little bit differently.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
I think somebody said to us, once you know this generation,
they're the problem. And what we've discovered is that this
generation is not the problem. This generation is the solution.
And by even changing some.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Of that language is a different perspective.
Speaker 4 (47:51):
Do you know the example I used on the football field,
Just by revealing that that makes a whole lot of
sense to a bunch of boys who are sitting there going,
why do I protect my mate on the football field?
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Get over here?
Speaker 5 (48:00):
When we're at a party, we're doing all this sort
of stuff. Why is it that? And why is it
that we celebrate risk?
Speaker 4 (48:05):
And another part of our messaging is, you know, I
was listening to that story telling about you know, if
you had the five people in the car, you know,
and you have the crash, and you've got the driver
who is the perpetrator, every single person in that car
that's thinking something and doesn't speak up, they're all part
of that problem. So enabling those kids to be part
(48:27):
part of that solution and making them to understand they
are but they can change something that our generation could.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Here's the baton.
Speaker 4 (48:35):
What are you going to do with these feelings you
have right now? When you walk out of there? And
it's not uncommon for teens sometimes to tear up during
the presentations. They think about how much they they love
their loved ones and what they're not doing to show
protection or leadership in their mates. You're feeling it. What
are you going to do on data? What does action
(48:56):
look like now you're feeling it? I can't do anything
to help you in that moment at two am when
you're at that party or god knows where.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Can't do anything for you.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
One of our biggest our strap line Well, we're described
as a strategy US led mission to change driving culture,
which we now realize that for all the messages that
we've got around driving, they apply to anything that is
around harm. So you can use the same things to
minimize harm. But our motto is own the choice on
the outcome. And if you are in your life, if
(49:29):
you actively be accountable for what you are going to do,
you're less likely to make really bad choices. Somebody was
filming you one hundred percent of the time, you wouldn't
do those things that you might do if it was anonymous.
You know, imagine that you're being filmed one hundred percent
of the time.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Would you do that?
Speaker 4 (49:46):
And I use this example with my own children. We've
got a lovely friend in our family, is a lovely gentleman.
I always say, would you do that in front of
that person? Like if he was watching you, would you
do that, kiddie? And if you wouldn't do it in
front of our great friend that you love and admire,
then perhaps don't do it anywhere. And that's It's like
a beast with its own head. Culture change is on
its way. The teaching part won't need to be the
(50:10):
main part. It's on its way. Culture change is happening
a bit like smoking. It's happening on its own. But
we are working on what does long term look like.
And we're very protective over all of our message to
make sure exactly what you're saying. The last thing that
we ever want you choose to be is tokenistic. It's
no good if it's tokenistic. Figured it's got to get
(50:32):
kids moving into action. You choose is not an awareness program.
We're an action program. What does action look like?
Speaker 2 (50:39):
We can't do the action this current generation can.
Speaker 5 (50:42):
It's just so optimistic.
Speaker 6 (50:44):
Say that again because I don't know what that is?
Not an awareness well, we're not an awareness program. We're
not this team generation they are aware. What we are
is an action program. What does action look like inside
your social ecosystem? You're protecting your man on the football field.
What are you going to do to protect your mate
(51:04):
not only in the car, but in all those social
situations where there's drugs, alcohol, bully and consent, the cowards punch,
all those things. What is action inside your social ecosystem
or just you or your little friendship group and gary
leadership can happen between just two people in those critical.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Moments that matter.
Speaker 4 (51:24):
And I hope that there will be listeners out there
listening to this, plenty of parents out there going. I
would really like to get this organization into my school
for a parents student evening because it is so powerful
to watch a teenager and mum and dad or dad whoever,
sitting side by side during that because they're having a
little conversation without saying any words, and it is the
(51:45):
most beautiful thing to see at the end of a
presentation to see a son hugging their mum and I think,
you know, it's just so beautiful and I have pangs.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
And they release each other from holy language of accountability.
If mom and dad know that John and his mates
have actually exchanged fear and in can exchange these permissions,
it's not a complex. We've been talking about complex issues
that underpin all this, but actually acting on it is
(52:20):
not complex. Like it's what we were saying before. Changing
the earth temperature is hard. Stepping in and protecting someone
you love in those few moments where you know you
really should and you've already pre agreed that you're going
to do it. That's actually kind of easy. When parents
see this, it's like, oh wow, great, you know we
don't have to have this complexity.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
It makes a lot of sense. And I think you
guys touch on it too. Not just teenagers too. This
this messaging can be young adults and there's will make
decisions in life and the consequences can be devastating.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
That cannot tell you how many parents have come up
going I needed to hear that. I needed that message.
Kids not the problem. I'm the problem. And you know
there is therein is the power of you choose it's
feel and reveal they've come to their own conclusions about
what they're doing inside their worlds.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
It's just so powerful.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
How can people reach out there? If I hope people
are listening to this and think, okay, this is exactly
what we need.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
So you can jump on our website, which is you
choose HYRS dot org dot au. Or you can reach
out to us on Instagram or Facebook, which is again
you choose y r S short for you Throad Safety
and we will do our very best. We will go
anywhere in this country. We will work with any organization, teens, hospitals,
(53:45):
we know, we do all the big arena events around
the country. We don't see anyone as competitors. We see
everybody as the solution and we will do our very best.
And you know, we often say that we're going to
do this social mission for as long as we.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Can.
Speaker 4 (54:02):
We're going to change a strange driving culture, or we're
going to die trying.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
One of the two things is going to happen.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
We'll speak to one person, we'll speak to matter well,
it's part of the process.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Together, you are a force of energy. I've got to
say that you've inspired myself on the stuff that you're
doing and the energy that you bring to the table,
bring to the room here, and I can imagine the
impact that you're having on the people that you're speaking to.
And I just want to take a moment to reflect
with what Jordan did, how would he be feeling about
(54:36):
what you guys are doing there.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
It's all very worthwhile question to ask. And this is
the power of it. We'll never know. That's the sadness
of it, but it's also the power of it. I
think that's best answered by saying, what would our discussions
be had he survived? And I think he would be
(55:01):
the type of person that would be trying to make
it right in whatever way that he could possibly make
it right. So I guess that's what we're doing, you know,
because I think that that, deep down would be what
he would do if he was here with us.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Well, you guys have said you've carried the guilt and
shame and what you're doing, And I could argue the
toss about the guilt and shame, like there's victims in
all sorts of things, and you guys have victims in
this is Yeah, I'll choose my words carefully here, but
I'll just say you guys are victims in this as well,
(55:40):
but you're carrying that guilt and shame and the work
that you're doing and what you're giving back to the community.
I'm just in awe.
Speaker 4 (55:47):
Of Really, I guess we're victims of Jordan's choices. But
you know, through this whole process, we just don't seek sympathy.
It is just all reserved for Jordan's victims families and
Jordan's victims families, And can I just take a moment
to say Gary for someone who has a son that
created so much carnage, for all of those responding officers,
those police officers that were there on the night the ambos,
(56:09):
as far as those poor police that had to turn
up on our door and do the death knot like,
thank you for all your services that you've done. We
think about it, and I take the opportunity all the
time to thank those services for what they do, because
you have to clean up decisions like this day in
day out, and I always think, how on earth do
you go home at night? Like can you unsee something
(56:30):
that you've seen? So thank you for all the work
that you've done. In your career and for.
Speaker 3 (56:34):
What you're doing now, yes, it's deeply meaningful.
Speaker 1 (56:38):
Well, I think get creating the platform and just take
on board what you say for the first responders, and
I see what they go through and it's difficult, but
we're trying to limit that as much as possible that
it can happen regardless what I'm doing there what I'm
finding inspiration from, because when I left the cops of
(56:59):
sort of who've seen? Where do I find purpose from
what I was doing? But this is allowed. Doing the
podcast here has given me a platform to allow people
like yourselves a voice and a platform to say what
you're doing. And I think you're making a bigger difference
than I could have ever in the police. And you
(57:20):
change the actions of one person, and you've seen the
ramifications or the ripple effect from one person. You just
change one person and allow them to avoid what you
guys have had to go for. That's making a huge difference.
So I suppose we're all sitting here, I'm complimenting you guys.
That's what I just want to say. I think the
(57:40):
work that you're doing is absolutely tremendous, and keep up
the good work and.
Speaker 4 (57:45):
Difference thank you for keeping me company with your podcast
because I'm in my car all the time and I
listen to you, so thank you for keeping me company
for so many hours while I'm driving.
Speaker 1 (57:53):
Oh, an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Thank you, Thanks Gary.
Speaker 3 (57:56):
Thanks Mate.
Speaker 4 (58:00):
The Friend.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
Later at NAT
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see aside of life. The average person is never
exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes in the contact with crime is
left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into
this world. In part two of my chat with Melissa
(00:48):
and Peter McGinnis, whose son Jordan died and killed four
other people in the car crash, we talk about their
lifelong mission to change the attitudes of young drivers. Given
what they had been through, I found it quite amazing
how they not only came to terms with what happened,
but also their outlook on life, and they are now
doing everything in their power to ensure that lessons learned
(01:09):
from Jordan's actions are not lost. I honestly don't know
if I would have the courage to not only face
what they've been through, but having the ability to turn
something so tragic into something worthwhile. If you have young children,
I suggest you have a listen and maybe even get
your kids to have a listen, because what they say
relates to so many aspects of life and the choices
(01:30):
that we make. Melissa and Peter, welcome back to I
Catch Killers for part two.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Thank you very much, thanks for having us again.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Well, I've got to say for part one it was
very informative and emotional on talking about the experience of
what you went through when your son Jordan involved in
that car crash in which four other people were killed
along along with Jordan, and came across first of all,
(02:02):
how well you guys have coped with it, like emotionally
and dissecting all the mixed emotions you went through with
the loss, the tragedy, the pain. But you also carried
carried the guilt and you talk about the guilt and
I just want to ask you, and we touched on
in part one, but where does that guilt come from?
(02:23):
Breaking it down? If you could just identify what that
guilt is about. Now, you said Peter in Part one,
logically we weren't responsible for the actions, but you're carrying
carrying that guilt.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yeah, I think it's it can't be broken down rationally.
I think it speaks to Melissa's point in part one.
I think she was using the term justifiers. It's you
you can justify or rationalize certain things. There's other things
that are deeply reflexive, visceral sort of feelings that you carry.
(03:02):
Had Jordan survived naturally, he would have been in prison
for a very long time.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
And these are thoughts that you've processed for it through
your mind yet, because that would have been a very
long time.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
So that's that's a guilt. You know, he paid the
ultimate price himself for those choices, of course, you know,
and we do do anything for it never to have
happened at all. But nonetheless that that guilt still sits
out there. While we do know rationally that it's not
something that we need to carry, it's something that you
(03:38):
do carry. And the rare times that you'll meet parents
that might have been through similar things, is funny how
often that that is just this feeling that just sits there.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
You know, well, I suppose it's that connection, that bomb
that you had with your children that Melissa, you feel
feel the same way.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
We can't put it down. From the day that he
killed those those young adults. That the weight I talked
about in Part one, that weight just sits so heavily
on us. I can't not wake up and think about
what Jordan did. In fact, a large part of our
life right now is all about what he did.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
That grief and I.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Talked about you, grief is one of those things that
you've got a ball of grief. And what happens with
grief is that the grief doesn't reduce, right, the grief
stays exactly the same. What happens is that life just
grows around that grief. And I still grieve grief Jordan
all the time. I'll never stop grieving with him. But
(04:35):
what we've learned to do is to live with that
grief a little bit better and to pick it up,
to carry it, to nurture it. And what do you
do with that grief? And that's I guess what has
resonated with Peter and I that we're going to pick
up that grief. We're going to nurture that weight, and
we are going to make this world a better.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Place with that weight that we carry. Just what else
can you do with it?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Look, there's a sense of deep eated sense of accountability,
responsibility that is beyond us. It's not about us. It's
actually about we've got this set of circumstances. What does
it mean to other people? How can this apply more
(05:20):
broadly into the community. Because this whole, all the elements
of road trauma are ostensibly preventable, and I guess we'll
go into this later, but the fact that we've had
the perspective that we've got tragically, it should mean something
for other people. It's not about necessarily just about our
(05:42):
journey and our lived experience. It's actually about what that
lived experience can and should mean for other people.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And we all can look in the mirror and see
these said the circumstances are not unique to yourselves, and
that could happen to other people. I think setting part one,
that was about three or four years after the accident
that you decided to start making making a difference and
getting out there and getting a message across.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
How did that occur?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Was it a light bulb moment that you thought we're
going to do something positive with this. How did it evolve?
Speaker 4 (06:21):
It was certainly in a light bulb. Mate was something
that we felt. We felt that we wanted to do
something a long time. For a long time we thought
about it, but we didn't know what to do, how
to do, how to put your head above the radar
and even talk about this. How's it going to be received? So,
by the way, I'm just going to pick up on it.
(06:41):
You said an accident. Jordan didn't have an accident that night.
An accident is what happened to his victims.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
And I was like to.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yes, about valid point, And that is a slip of
the tongue with myself in preparing for this. And I'm
glad you picked me up on that because I started
writing this motor vehicle accent. But I've been consciously trying
to call it a.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Crash and you have and I yeah, and I We're
really taken, yeah, very big on that the accident happened
to Jordan's victims.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Jordan's was a choice.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
So getting back to your question, So, in twenty seventeen,
I met a lovely She was a police officer at
the time, Constable Tracy Cluston. She was running a Save
Day road safety expo at a school on the Gold
Coast and she just said, you know, would you like
to come and contribute?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And I said, I really would like.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
It was the first opportunity to go, all right, we'll
try something. So I spoke for around about twenty four
minutes that day, and at the end of it, I
had never public spoken. I was so nervous and I
cried a lot. I couldn't even work the PowerPoint presentation.
I had a friend, you know, that was clicking through
it because I was so nervous. And at the end
of it, quite a few of the students came up.
(07:51):
A lot of the responders that were there, the police,
the ambos, and the fieries came up and they went, wow,
that was that was really powerful. And the reason that
it was powerful, and I knew that what we should
be talking into is Jordan's choices. There are no excuses
for what Jordan did that night. He made choices, and
that's what we talked into, and it was quite confronting.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
We then did a.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Couple more of those Save Day expos with Senior Constable
Tracy Cluston. And I sort of thought, well, I'll just
you know, I reached out to some of the parents
that I knew and the teachers in the community and
see if we could go and I could just go
and talk myself at schools, and that's how it started.
So we didn't necessarily sit down with a business plan
and go, RITYO, this is what we're going to do.
(08:34):
It started out very, very organically. I was working five
days a week when we started out, and I had
this lovely boss who allowed me to go to four
days a week, so I would have one day that
I would go into schools and do a presentation, and
bit by bit the.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Programs sort of emerged.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
So where we started and where we thought we should
be was not where we are today. So for the
last we've been going for I think we're in our
ninth year now. I think we really formalize this in
around about twenty nineteen. I left my career in twenty
twenty and we went full time.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
With You Choose.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
But we learned very quickly that we didn't have the answers,
that the answers resided in this current generation, and that
the idea was not to teach, but was to extrapolate
the solutions from this current generation, synthesized them, and redeliver them.
(09:33):
You know, so I E and I say this in
the presentation today. You know, for me, it's not a
teaching paradigm. For me, it's a learning paradigm. Your generation
is showing us how to make this really powerful. And
that's the truth we've really learned from this generation.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, that's a really good summation of how the trip
has been because I think from the very outset it
won't be newsed to you Gary that school based or
community policing it's constructive to have a bereaved person to
talk to kids about choices and consequences.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, and I think that was very much I guess
the role if you like, very early on in the piece.
But it was really interesting to us that right from
the outset, the type of responses we were getting verbatim
from kids themselves, also from teachers and parents, but particularly
from the young people was that they don't always immediately
(10:33):
envisage themselves as a victim of anything. And that's a
bit of a hard nut to crack, apparently we found
out from teachers and team behavioral psychologists, but there is
they can actually see themselves all hang on and we're
all holding a mirror up to them. So what was
initially like a concept, I guess, which is a bit
(10:54):
like storytelling, Well we'll just tell people about these circumstances
and that will be enough. Really quickly became something that
we were noticing that put kids into a really authentic
state of reflection about themselves. So what started off being
a story about the circumstances surrounding Jordan's crash actually became
something that was an exercise in self reflection. And that's
(11:16):
this verbatim feedback loop we're getting from participants.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
How did you create that? How did you deliver that?
So you've got a group of school students there, they're
all misbehaving, the teacher calls them in the line and OK,
these people are turning up to speak to you. How
do you break the story down?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Well, funny, it's a stude of you to say that,
because the number of times it happens to this day
that we'll have teachers telling us. And by the way,
we also that the program is also delivered to various
other community organizations well even as adults these days, as
occupational health and safety course because the principles apply it.
But we've so often had teachers that will apologize in
(11:57):
advance for their cohorts, So I'll say, look, I've got
apologize for this mob. You know, the buggers, they're likely
to be disruptive. We have never, ever, ever had a
disruptive cohort go through this program, not once, and it's
been delivered in every state and territory I think now,
and to many, many hundreds of thousands of kids over
(12:18):
all these years. And you can hear a pin drop
throughout the presentation phase of the program, which is sixty
minutes every time, and we're learning more and more about
why that is. As Melissa says, it's not something that
we've got all the knowledge on, but because of that
response to our content, we're deeply curious as to why
(12:38):
kids lean into this. So year on year on year
we've learnt and we've maintained this curiosity about why these
messages are working. And with the help of some fantastic
voluntary well being and pastoral care educators, team behavioral experts
and so on like, we've managed to refine the feedback
(13:00):
that we're getting from the kids into a program that
has become more and more deliverable and measurable beyond just
the storytelling.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Okay, And I was going to say, I think obstensibly
the program is designed the first half is very much
about the backstory. That's what gets him into the deep
state of personal reflection. And the second part is we
know what we can't do anything. There's nothing that we
can really do.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
This is all about what you do.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
So you're feeling it now. You're feeling like you do
anything to protect the people that you love. And I
use this particular example, and it's probably the best example
I think that I can use for you choose. And
it came from a conversation with a young man and
we were talking about, you know, at the end of
a presentation, young men particularly come up and they want
to have a chat and it's often you know, the
big rub rough and rugged Apex sporting lad and we'll
(13:46):
talk about, you know, the feelings you have when you
run out onto a sporting field. You know, you do
anything to protect your mates out on that sporting field.
You die, fight, kill, anything to protect your mates, and
you're admired for your leadership and your protection attributes those
same young men who are doing anything to protect their
mates out on the sporting field, can then get into.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
The car or other areas of their lives.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
And in danger their mates that they were doing anything
to protect over here on the sporting field.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Protection and leadership is in you.
Speaker 5 (14:13):
How do we extract that.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Or how do we synthesize harness that and bring that
into the car and all those decision making moments. So
that's the sort of a little bit of here you go,
you're feeling those feelings. Leadership and protection is in it,
You exhibit it in so many areas.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Of your life. How do we harness that in those moments?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Just that by way of an example, I understand the
mentality of a young man in a football environment and
all that. Yet we're going to protect, We're going to
back you up, fight and then flip it. Well, why
do you lose that when you get in the car.
You choose? Just break it down. What's the aim of
you choose?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
So the mission is very much about creating social purpose
behind the changes that are necessary, not just in road
use culture, but in harm prevention culture in general. So
the idea Melissa touched on it before, it's not actually
(15:12):
a teaching paradigm. It's not like we've got all the answers,
and the challenge here is to put the answers into
the participants or into teenagers or the community in general.
It's very much a mutual compact here where through sort
of mutual reflection we understand and our wheelhouse is road trauma.
(15:32):
So it's the context that we use, and it's a
good one because most of these kids are either drivers
or passengers talking to you. So once we put aside
these legacy myths that we've had around driving and road use,
but in fact, in harm prevention in general, like for
a hundred years, about making the connections between intentions, choices,
(15:56):
and actions and the people that we most protend, profess
to want to love and protect. To explain that, Gary,
you just said it at the start of part two,
you use the term accident. An accident is reflexive. We've
been calling these things accidents since cars first arrived on
our roads, and the nexus there is that because we
(16:18):
didn't mean to cause it, therefore it's not our fault,
it's an accident bad luck. Right, So when you have
that embedded generationally, where road crashes, crashes are bad luck,
where things that you didn't intend to happen, but through
your choices, you harm other people. Are bad luck. You
didn't mean it. Gary, I can't tell you how many
(16:41):
times people will sympathize with us to this day, don't
they say? They'll look in our face and I'll say, oh,
poor Jordan, we've all done it.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Yeah, that was a conversation I have with and.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Maybe we've got a lot of work to do while
that's still happening. And it's a reflex that people have
because if Jordan had have done what he had done
to for other people with anything but a motor vehicle,
do you think anyone would be saying to us like, gee,
poor Jordan. You know, we've all done it. So we've
got this paradigm that we used to make ourselves feel better. Oh,
(17:16):
you didn't mean it. You crashed your car. You made
choices in your car that caused harm to yourself, which,
by the way, if you cause harm to yourself, there's
not a single person there. That person's got a family
that are dealing with grief and all that sort of stuff,
let alone harming other people. So as soon as participants
in this program get onto these really obvious dynamics that
(17:40):
will wait a second. We got control over these.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Things trying to try and I was fascinated by your
take on it and agreed with you one hundred percent,
changing the narrative from yeah and I can imagine those
words coming in other people's mouths saying to you, Oh,
we've all done it. You did stupid things when you
were young. We've got to change that, haven't we.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Well, the messages that go to young people are that
this is just part of growing up. It's part of life.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Crazy, silly, reckless young guys.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Recklessnes and look, we don't need the name, but we
would have all seen them, particularly when we were younger
and growing up. Where the type of campaigning that's out
there around trauma and road trauma prevention is about people
finding relatability with teens, and the easiest way to find
a relatability with a team is to tell them about
(18:35):
you as a teen. We think we know teenagers because
we used to be one, so it's common we see
really accomplished, highly intelligent people engaging teenagers by saying, geez,
when I was your age, I used to go to
the drive in the boot of the car, or I
used to ride on that in all of the reckless behavior,
and then the message at the end of it is yeah,
but don't you do it okay, So all they're hearing
(18:56):
about this is that everyone does it right. And then
the messages which are buy the way true, the neurological
messages that they get. You know, your brain's not fully
developed to be able to make informed decisions until you're
like twenty five, or you've got it impulsive until your
brain develops. Probably all that stuffs true. But when you
add that on top of our culture, which is this
(19:16):
mythological culture about bad luck not choices, you've got the
messages that you're giving to teenagers are just that it's
just a bit of a dangerous time to be alive,
and it's part of life to be making these really
reckless decisions that can harm or kill other people.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
When it looks so powerful in what you're saying, then
changing that narrative, I'd use an example, what's one that
the coward punch the King hit. That's a classic example,
really good one. It was a King hit. This bloke
got King hit, and there was no shame to King hit.
But once the terminology was changed on the back of
(19:52):
the campaign to a coward punch that really identified it
for what it is. And I take on board with
what you're saying about changing it from this accident because
that has all those connotations to a crash and why
did the crash happen that we'll lose a number of
led to that.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And as soon as you And that's why intentions, choices,
and actions are a part of the really important reflective framework,
because the truth is our Sudden didn't wake up on
the day that he did what he did with that crash,
going I'm going to intend to do all of this,
of course not he's a good person, pretty much like
anyone else that would attend to you choose program, But
(20:33):
his intentions mean absolutely nothing if his choices are harming
other people. And that nexus is really revealing to teenagers
and they lean into it because they've got these strong
protective instincts that Melissa pointed to before and that was
a great example, and to marry him up is really powerful.
(20:53):
By the way, this also works with adults. So you
could be in a room full of people when we
do this exercise really frequently where you'll say, by a
show of hands, how many people have seen a social
media post written in the first person to someone who's
passed away. Almost every hand goes up, you know, and
with the older people it's like hands up if you've
(21:15):
got or you've seen a tattoo on someone that's commemorating
someone that's passed away, you know, And that's beautiful thing
to express your love like that. But here's a challenge.
Move that love that you've got for your friends and
your family and your mates and put it right now
in the present. Because that person that you might have
(21:36):
been able to influence or help or just pull up
or call out, but you step back from it, they
can't now see your tattoo and they can't read that
social media post. So let's step all of that love
that we've got as mates, as family, Let's move that
into the hear and now and come up with ways
inside each of our social groups to put a side
(21:58):
passivity which we can speak too late, and start talking
to each other.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
One that one of the notes so I've got about
is don't be a passive observer in the situation. And
I like, again, I like the messaging that you're saying.
It's all very well after the event to say we
cared for your brother, you're one of us, and all that.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Rest in paradise. John. Yeah, it's too late. He can't
hear you, mate.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
But the message before he got in the car should
have been, mate, I love you. Don't get in the
carr and.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
This this is at the bottom of and by the way,
this isn't a theory that we've got. You know, we've
been in a regular one hundreds and hundreds of thousands
of kids.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Have you actually done hundreds of Ye.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
We just did thirty thousand kids a condensed version of
it at the B Street Arena of event in Sydney
just last week at Kudos.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
But over the years, the amount of the amount of
survey data that we've got, so.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
You've put some some of the data in research with
the universe.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. So we're really fortunate last year
that the Griffith University Criminals Institute actually did a randomized
control trial on the effectiveness of the program, which is
a bit nerve wracking of course, because you know they
can get out the end of it and it's not
as good as yeah yeah, but look, it's in peer
(23:14):
review now, so it's close to being complete. But the
initial evaluation has demonstrated that the program has a significant
effect on risk taking intentions and extrapolated behaviors inside teen
social groups, and it points to passive individuals inside social
groups being at high risk of harmful behavior inside their
(23:38):
social settings, which is very revealing to us.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Because let's break that down to talk a bit more
about that.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
We got curious about this, didn't we, Melissa, no, you please,
I know that we got really curious about this because
we there was a pattern that came out in our
post program surveys and in our anecdotal interactions with kids.
And it wouldn't matter what region we are in, what city,
what socio demographics, the number of times we heard comments like, ah,
(24:09):
I was just listening to that that that piece, and
I just it made me think about that time that
I just got into that car and I just knew
I shouldn't have, but I just did, you know? Or
And we hear that a lot. We often hear like
we like, there's three people in the car, two of
them are scared, one of them is doing something else,
the driver is not paying attention. You know this this
(24:31):
passivity and they recognize it in each other. And when
you see like the groups of friends, teenage friends talking
to each other. You're not necessarily looking at that determined
law breaker, that street racer, that motoring enthusiast type of person.
Maybe the program will not get through to a hardcore
five percent of people that are determined to break the law,
(24:53):
but that's not where most of the crashes generally come.
All sorts of people get involved in road trauma up.
So that level of passivity became really interesting. And like,
these are people that are best friends gary or or cousins,
people have known themselves forever, going oh, I feel like
I can't say something. I feel like I should say something,
(25:14):
but I can't. And it's not about turning every kid
into an angel, of course, but they'll tell you that
once or twice a year, maybe a few times more,
a set of circumstances will come up when they really
know that they should say something, but they feel that
they can't. So the bones of the program, or like
a big element of the program is to practice these permissions,
(25:38):
to give each other permission to call each other out
or talk to each other about this harmful stuff. And
we know we've got to.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
How do we make that cool for the kids? As
in they instead of being the person that if they're
at the school formal and someone's runs up to the
teacher to say, Johnny's about to get in the car
and drive, and then the kids would turn on that
can we change Do you think we can change that
culture around?
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah, it's a personal compact between two people, and that
the secret is to not make it prescriptive. So the
secret is to enable people to have these conversations and
to practice them throughout a school year, in schools or
whatever the community group happens to be, just like you
practice your footy or your musical instruments, because you make
(26:26):
all those linkages. We want to protect each other, We
want to look out for each other.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So give a I'm talking in a class, create a
hypothetical situation. How would you react to this?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Fether or how would you react to this?
Speaker 5 (26:37):
I actually think that that's the magic dust of you choose.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
So we talked about it in part one that what
we hope to achieve through our program is that when
we come in and we do our component of storytelling,
the first part is about breaking down the teens. The
second part is about building them up. This is about
what you can do inside your social eco systems to
protect yourself, protect your mates and the people that you love.
So the magic dust, I think is that ability to
(27:04):
whilst those teens are in that deep state of personal reflection.
I talk exactly about that. You know, one of our
biggest take homes is if you get nothing else out
of today when you walk out these doors today, if
you love your mate, give them permission today to call
you out on your potentially poor behaviors in advance of
(27:26):
those moments that matter.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
So don't wait till.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Two am when you're at that party on a Saturday
night and everything's going sideways. Don't wait till then to
have that conversation.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
It's too late.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Had the conversation today. I know as teenagers, I'm watching
my sixteen year old go through it now. It's hard
to have those conversations. You're not allowed to have those conversations.
This gives the teens the ability to walk out have
the conversations today, get in advance of those awkward moments.
Have the awkward conversation today. You're feeling it, you're feeling
that protection and that love that you have for each other.
(27:59):
Now is your time to talk about it, so that
when that moment comes next Saturday night or whenever it is,
you've had that conversation. So it might work for everybody
on that day, but it might give the kids the
ability to start those conversations that they don't know how
to start or they're not allowed to have. It gives
them permission to go.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
It just it provides a social context.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
And why isn't that we feel like we can't speak
up in those moments.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Let's break that down.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
The study is interesting because, and this is not to
pull apart one set of circumstances, but if you were
just to use a car with five people in it,
we usually operate on a binary that says, if the
driver has caused a crash, then we've got a perpetrator
and four victims. That car is actually a social ecosystem
(28:49):
following people. Five people in that car, Now they won't
always be in the same social group, but if two
people in that car have got this predisposed, I'm not
going to feel like a dickhead if I say something
I've already told you in advance. If you're my best mate,
you're my cousin, you're a friend. Even this, we see
(29:11):
this work in school communities. This is the culture that
we've got. When we know we've got to say something,
we will. And this isn't about dobbing on the slightest thing.
This is about two people deciding between each other that
when I feel this compulsion and this is a carry
guilt about this, right, I feel this compulsion to say something,
(29:31):
but I feel too awkward to say it, Well, don't
feel awkward. Think if you think you've got to say
it to me, say it now. Then you're starting to
recognize that you've got this, That you've got social elements
at play to road trauma prevention that are in addition
to all that stuff that, of course we need, Like
we've never spent more on safer cars, we've never had
(29:53):
safer roads, we've never had more regulations more stringently policed,
and we need all of that. We need the driving
and the skills training. But the road trauma statistics are
not good. We may be having more people survive because
of the quality of the safety in cars, but in
some jurisdictions, in some age groups, the statistics are actually
(30:14):
heading in the opposite direction. So what are the elements
that we need to reinforce all this fantastic investment that
we're making, which, by the way, we need to keep making.
We're not saying this is a binary and that only soulture,
but those underlying factors that look at our road use culture,
which is what we were speaking about before, about accidents
(30:35):
versus crashes and intentions versus choices, and you overlay that
with these social compacts that actually give people permission to
act on their instincts to love their mates. It's funny
to protect and protect their mates. The number of times
we hear mums in particular that will contact and it's
every week, and like it's all the time. We'll have
(30:55):
mums contact us and say, well, I thought little Johnny
was going to a roads safety thing and he comes
home and he tells me, hugs me and tells me
he loves me. I haven't got a grunk out of
him for the last six months. Who would have thought
that so much of these messages from some of the
more unlikely kids. This is why I say that the
demographics are universal. Everyone loves someone usually, and particularly in
(31:21):
young people. Love and protection go hand in hand, those
protective instincts, and the You Choose program provides a framework
to build those habits out on top of those feelings
of love and protection.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And the way and you look at it as you
get older in life and you look back where this
real strength comes from, and you know, naively as a teenager,
you're thinking the strength comes from just being part of
the group and all that. But it's the people that
do stand up and call people out on their behavior,
like if someone's going to get in the car and say, no,
you've had too much to drink, You're not not doing
(31:57):
it that type of thing to make that acceptable. So
I'm finding it fascinating what you're talking about, like introduce,
let's see them hard, Let's see them with the love feeling. Yeah,
love and protection, this is what you're meant to do.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
Well, they're already feeling it from that first part. It's
very confronting to see that first part of the youtoose presentation.
And again, the power of Youtooe is to stand up
as Jordan's mother and own everything that he did, everything
that he did.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I make we make.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
No excuses for Jordan. I said it in part one.
Jordan would never have intended to harm the people that
he loved, the people that he most loved, his little sisters.
Yet it just doesn't matter what he intended to do.
All that matters is what he did. So they're feeling
that love. And you just touched on something before when
you were talking about changing one punch kills to the
coward punch. That's sort of a little bit of an
(32:48):
analogy of the example I used on the football field.
When they hear that language around road safety and they
think about you, well, I do do that with my
main I do protect him out there.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It gives them that.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Feeling of going, well, I will start to protect him here.
It's a little bit like that coward's punch. When you
change that wording.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
It means and it becomes a social purpose. This thing.
It's not Peter and Melissa own it and where and
we're putting it to you or giving it to you.
You own the YouTube's philosophies now, Gary, because we've spoken
about it. Everyone that participates in this is responsible for
this social change. Because preventable trauma is unacceptable. Something that
(33:34):
can be prevented through choices is obviously unacceptable. It's not
a part of life. And you'll hear people that have
been affected by road trauma say this over and over again.
It wasn't until it happened to us that we realize
we're just so flippant when it comes to this thing.
And while the fatalities are kind of stable climbing in
some way, there is not in others. We're still looking
(33:56):
at sixty seventy thousand serious injuries every year that a
life changing for whole families that simply should not have
to happen. You'd know forensic crash investigators that will tell
you that they've never seen a genuine accident in thirty
years on the job. Break it down for god, where
a tree falls out of a series of choices that
(34:19):
cause these things.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Just tell me, with the stuff that you're doing, there
seems to be we either of you teachers before this,
or there seems to be some academic research behind it,
or you mentioned Melissa, that came organically. But it's really
clear and concise messaging that you're delivering here.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
It's because it came from this team generation. We didn't
go there going we have all the answers. That's where
we started, and then we realized, wait, one moment, we
need to understand this generation, extrapolate the answers from them,
synthesize the messages, and deliver them straight back to the kids.
It's why it's so powerful.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
It's driven by the it's driven by the young people themselves.
So the answer is that, no, we're not teachers, but
we've had fantastic assistance and support over the years from
from policing first responders, but especially from professional educators who
are really curious about why this program work and assisting
(35:20):
us to put together, you know, the compact way that
we can get it out without being prescriptive. And this
is the balancing act. It's like, Okay, you've got to
enable the kids to find the to do these things
for themselves and to treat it like a social purpose
without teaching it at them, because if you teach it
at them and it's prescriptive, they won't take it on board.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
I should of call it feel and reveal you're feeling
it and you're revealing it to yourself.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Okay, that because the way that you're speaking to me,
it's just my mind sticking over and thinking, yeah, I
can understand how kids would buy into that and the narratives,
the examples that you're using, and how you're taking it
down letting them come up with the come up with
the answers. I want to sis we're talking driving situations.
(36:08):
Does do you think this type of education can help
for other issues that come with been a young person
in today's society, consent and bullying and different things like that.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
It's how we look out for each other, and in
fact that it's not just about teenagers, Garry. We're doing
piloting work on exactly the same principles with fly and
flyout workforce with their industrial safety, which is they've got
highly regulated compliance and safety. What more can we do
(36:41):
other than to make these rules and regulations as stringent
as we can make. Well, changing hearts and minds is
really important.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Well as the years of a police officer, rules can
the rules and regulations can only go so far.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
We had the arrogance in two thousand and seven am
to think that we had some teach or that just
sort of like sharing the story was enough. But the
more you dig into these dynamics, the more you realize
we've got so much to learn. So and and by
the way, every every generation changes. Inside two years, kids
communicate with each other completely differently inside two and three
(37:17):
years periods.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
You've got to evolve, how I know, part of the
aim and the mission was to deliver this message to
all schools across across the country. How how close are
you coming to getting that or what direction you're heading
that in that regards to get the message out to
all the schools.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Well, we're a fair way off being in every school,
but we are in every state and territory and we've
got many, many hundreds of schools across Australia. And like
we call it, it's a social mission. So we call
participants once they're finished, you choose mission advocates because it's
it's up to them inside there. It's up to them
inside their social groups. Even if it's just because drop
(37:56):
it in and correct, just keeps and that many kids
will come up and say what can we do? And
you know what, they're they're the best because they can
go to the school in the suburb of Oh my
cousin doesn't do this, she needs to do it, or
he needs to do it. Works great out in the
regions because out in the regions outside of the cities
that they're just determined to go. This whole region needs it.
I'll go we do every school.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Part of that mission, part of the actual presentation that
we do is a call to action that if you
like this, here is the call to action. This is
I'm handing over the baton to you to go and
do something. And we do a lot of parents student evenings,
and of course parents become our biggest advocates. I love
we love doing parents student because parents get it straight
(38:37):
off and they just go, wow, that really meant something.
Parents become the people that advocate for us. The teens
become the advocate. So we're actually essentially run through the community.
We don't really promote ourselves. It's through peer advocacity, through
teacher to teach, a student, to principal, parent to school.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Police, district of police issue. So parents are that good
because they'll often ask us, oh, my son or daughter
has just got their l plates, what should I say
to And of course our response is if we had
our time again, we now understand that by the time
you're having these social cultural discussions with your team, it's
(39:17):
a bit late. We need to be setting these examples
and this is what these future generations can do. By
the time you're putting your newborn into the capsule in
the car, so that when you get that speeding fine,
you're not able the kitchen table going those bloody cops.
They've been trapped me again.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Respect it.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
How about respecting that. It's not about lionizing people that
are sort of busting speed cameras all over the place.
It's about sort of understanding that unless you are a
determined law breaker, you haven't got the civic right to
drive however you want. And you need to show your
kids that don't set this cruise control at one hundred
(39:53):
and nineteen because you're convinced the cops won't get you
for less than ten. Show the kids that you're serious
about protecting them and protecting each other and other from
completely preventable harm, so that we don't perpetuate this culture
where the rules and frameworks that surround keeping people safe
(40:16):
on the roads are somehow separate from other law they're not.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Have the government brought into this in assisting you. Have
you had any support from government in delivering what you're delivering.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
We've not had government funding. That was disappointing in the
very early years. I can't like there's problems when you're
delivering something nationally across state orders, right because it's the
state transport departments that have usually got the funding to
assist with these kinds of things. But overall, Gary, I
think it may have been a blessing in disguise because
(40:54):
the communities themselves support this program. Schools are happy to
support the program and fund our ability to deliver it,
and in many respects that sort of empowers us to
be able to go on and be curious about different
methods and new methods and be a little.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Bit You're probably right there with if you get the
government backing that comes to restrictions, and it does, and.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I feel very much like that.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
There is a lot of government top down stuff right
now in education, but I don't feel like there's very
much grassroots from the bottom up. And I think that's
the role we've discovered that we play, and it's been
actually easier to just be able to explore that avenue
on our own without any restrictions from anyone. We've got
the ability to go in and understand this generation and
(41:40):
also to tick their boxes. Sometimes when you work with
the government, there's so many political boxes that you must
tick that sometimes you wind up. You know, you can
inadvertently untick the boxes of the teens. And again, I
think that's why the program can be so powerful, because
I'm not or we are not restricted to doing certain things.
I think one of the biggest things that I've learned
(42:00):
from the teens is that, for goodness sake, don't walk
in and make a seventeen or an eighteen year old
are where about road safety The second that I hold
up the fatal five, which is necessary, they must know that.
And I think awareness starts a little bit earlier the
second we start doing that, as the second they go, well,
I'm not going to listen to you now, because you're
now just telling me stuff I already know.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Therefore I'm not going to listen.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
So we're definitely don't present eachees as anything other than
complementary to everything else that it's out there. It's certainly
not a binary, but it does reinforce existing methods with
this sort of socio cultural piece that sits in underneath
all the other stuff. They absolutely must have.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Well, the power of your story, as we've talked about it,
it grabs people in teenagers are going to listen to it,
and they where you say teachers might apologize beforehand, the
kids are going to be disruptive. I think most kids realize, well,
this is not the time to be disruptive. When you
guys are up there telling your stories, in the delivery
(42:57):
of so many sessions, talking about what you're talking about.
How does it impact on YouTube personally?
Speaker 4 (43:04):
I think sometimes people assume that we are this big organization,
where not Peter works full time outside of YouTube and
then spends a lot of hours working on the strategy
with Youtubes. I do full time hours working inside the
school system. All of the bookings, all of the everything.
I do all of it.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
And we do a lot.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Of travel, so I spend a lot of time coordinating schools,
coordinating travel. It's actually, really it's really tiring, I would imagine,
and sometimes I feel a little bit personally like I
work off an emotionally empty tanking. I'm sort of up
and down all the time because what I do is
such an emotional and taxing profession. But I get this
immediate uplift from the teens right then and there. Sometimes
(43:49):
with some schools I might only get sixty minutes. Sometimes
I get ninety minutes. So we get this opportunity to
talk to teens and the conversations that come out and
then maybe those testimonials from teens later.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
It it sourishes.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
It feels my it feels my tank straight away. And
I got this beautiful message from a young man from
a Gold Coast school last week and he said to me.
He sent me a message straight afterwards, and it was
something along the lines I'm paraphrasing here, but he said,
you know that that was so powerful. My mates and
I we walked straight out. We did what you said
to do. We exchange those permissions and commitments, he said.
We all had a little cry. He then sent me
(44:24):
a message the following Friday night and he said, I
just want to let you know that we all hooked
up together for our you know, Friday night it's raining.
Ordinarily we'd go drifting tonight. We just said we're not
going to do that. We'll go do something else.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
That's the sort of thing. I can't stand up here
and go. You know, we've saved X amount.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
Of lives, But that is what inspires me to get
out of bed every single day. I know it inspires
Peter to go.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
There.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
You go, there's that one kid, all of him and
his mates consciously made a decision to go, We're not
going to do that.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
That's that social purpose.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
And I could give you so thousands.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
Examples of that and sometimes I will go to some
schools and I might have every single person hug me
on the way out, and I haven't done anything particularly amazing.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
They're just feeling.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
They're looking at me, going could I do that to
my mother? Or could I do that to my mate's mother.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
They're feeling it.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
But there's an optimism to us. There's this change energy
and it's actually not something that's necessarily cautionary. It's this
change impetus that you see well in different ways in
different schools. I guess to answer the question from my perspective,
(45:38):
all that we love to hear over this long arc,
and we hear this from many many schools where they
treat it as a cultural tradition. So the you Choose
mission is passed on from cohort to cohort. So you'll
have the kids incoming, kids in year twelve who have
done their youtubes in year eleven go talk to the
(45:59):
year sevens. This is how we look out for each
other and senior school, and by the time that you're
doing senior school, you're going to be the custodians of
the you Choose mission. And that's not about us, that's them.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
You're empowering them.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
And that happens over and we see it a lot.
And when you see that, this is this is what
the intention is. You guys, young ladies are handing you
own this social purpose.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
It's a smart, smart way of getting getting that message across,
isn't it. Because I'm just thinking when I was a
teenager a long time ago. But you rebel when you're
told to do something. Yeah, told not to do that,
I'm going to do it straight away. But once you
change the culture and the thinking and then you become
invested and it becomes your program.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Look if you step back from attempting to be relatable
with a sixteen year old and just being vulnerable enough
to go, here's.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
Some tools and let them, let them go.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Hey, this is an outrage. This stuff should this stuff
shouldn't be happening. It becomes their mission to change. Old
buggers are setting fire to the earth, we're destroying the drink, right,
So that's that's their response to it, you know, And it's.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Sell us out as the silly old fools, what will
we know and empower them to Well, it's so different.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
When all those pennies start to drop for all of
those reasons that we spoke about before, and there's a
multitude of them, but we're learning as we go how
to connect them all together and turn it into an
enabling program. Each school or each participant just takes on
board a little bit differently.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
I think somebody said to us, once you know this generation,
they're the problem. And what we've discovered is that this
generation is not the problem. This generation is the solution.
And by even changing some.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Of that language is a different perspective.
Speaker 4 (47:51):
Do you know the example I used on the football field,
Just by revealing that that makes a whole lot of
sense to a bunch of boys who are sitting there going,
why do I protect my mate on the football field?
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Get over here?
Speaker 5 (48:00):
When we're at a party, we're doing all this sort
of stuff. Why is it that? And why is it
that we celebrate risk?
Speaker 4 (48:05):
And another part of our messaging is, you know, I
was listening to that story telling about you know, if
you had the five people in the car, you know,
and you have the crash, and you've got the driver
who is the perpetrator, every single person in that car
that's thinking something and doesn't speak up, they're all part
of that problem. So enabling those kids to be part
(48:27):
part of that solution and making them to understand they
are but they can change something that our generation could.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Here's the baton.
Speaker 4 (48:35):
What are you going to do with these feelings you
have right now? When you walk out of there? And
it's not uncommon for teens sometimes to tear up during
the presentations. They think about how much they they love
their loved ones and what they're not doing to show
protection or leadership in their mates. You're feeling it. What
are you going to do on data? What does action
(48:56):
look like now you're feeling it? I can't do anything
to help you in that moment at two am when
you're at that party or god knows where.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Can't do anything for you.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
One of our biggest our strap line Well, we're described
as a strategy US led mission to change driving culture,
which we now realize that for all the messages that
we've got around driving, they apply to anything that is
around harm. So you can use the same things to
minimize harm. But our motto is own the choice on
the outcome. And if you are in your life, if
(49:29):
you actively be accountable for what you are going to do,
you're less likely to make really bad choices. Somebody was
filming you one hundred percent of the time, you wouldn't
do those things that you might do if it was anonymous.
You know, imagine that you're being filmed one hundred percent
of the time.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Would you do that?
Speaker 4 (49:46):
And I use this example with my own children. We've
got a lovely friend in our family, is a lovely gentleman.
I always say, would you do that in front of
that person? Like if he was watching you, would you
do that, kiddie? And if you wouldn't do it in
front of our great friend that you love and admire,
then perhaps don't do it anywhere. And that's It's like
a beast with its own head. Culture change is on
its way. The teaching part won't need to be the
(50:10):
main part. It's on its way. Culture change is happening
a bit like smoking. It's happening on its own. But
we are working on what does long term look like.
And we're very protective over all of our message to
make sure exactly what you're saying. The last thing that
we ever want you choose to be is tokenistic. It's
no good if it's tokenistic. Figured it's got to get
(50:32):
kids moving into action. You choose is not an awareness program.
We're an action program. What does action look like?
Speaker 2 (50:39):
We can't do the action this current generation can.
Speaker 5 (50:42):
It's just so optimistic.
Speaker 6 (50:44):
Say that again because I don't know what that is?
Not an awareness well, we're not an awareness program. We're
not this team generation they are aware. What we are
is an action program. What does action look like inside
your social ecosystem? You're protecting your man on the football field.
What are you going to do to protect your mate
(51:04):
not only in the car, but in all those social
situations where there's drugs, alcohol, bully and consent, the cowards punch,
all those things. What is action inside your social ecosystem
or just you or your little friendship group and gary
leadership can happen between just two people in those critical.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Moments that matter.
Speaker 4 (51:24):
And I hope that there will be listeners out there
listening to this, plenty of parents out there going. I
would really like to get this organization into my school
for a parents student evening because it is so powerful
to watch a teenager and mum and dad or dad whoever,
sitting side by side during that because they're having a
little conversation without saying any words, and it is the
(51:45):
most beautiful thing to see at the end of a
presentation to see a son hugging their mum and I think,
you know, it's just so beautiful and I have pangs.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
And they release each other from holy language of accountability.
If mom and dad know that John and his mates
have actually exchanged fear and in can exchange these permissions,
it's not a complex. We've been talking about complex issues
that underpin all this, but actually acting on it is
(52:20):
not complex. Like it's what we were saying before. Changing
the earth temperature is hard. Stepping in and protecting someone
you love in those few moments where you know you
really should and you've already pre agreed that you're going
to do it. That's actually kind of easy. When parents
see this, it's like, oh wow, great, you know we
don't have to have this complexity.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
It makes a lot of sense. And I think you
guys touch on it too. Not just teenagers too. This
this messaging can be young adults and there's will make
decisions in life and the consequences can be devastating.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
That cannot tell you how many parents have come up
going I needed to hear that. I needed that message.
Kids not the problem. I'm the problem. And you know
there is therein is the power of you choose it's
feel and reveal they've come to their own conclusions about
what they're doing inside their worlds.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
It's just so powerful.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
How can people reach out there? If I hope people
are listening to this and think, okay, this is exactly
what we need.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
So you can jump on our website, which is you
choose HYRS dot org dot au. Or you can reach
out to us on Instagram or Facebook, which is again
you choose y r S short for you Throad Safety
and we will do our very best. We will go
anywhere in this country. We will work with any organization, teens, hospitals,
(53:45):
we know, we do all the big arena events around
the country. We don't see anyone as competitors. We see
everybody as the solution and we will do our very best.
And you know, we often say that we're going to
do this social mission for as long as we.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Can.
Speaker 4 (54:02):
We're going to change a strange driving culture, or we're
going to die trying.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
One of the two things is going to happen.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
We'll speak to one person, we'll speak to matter well,
it's part of the process.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Together, you are a force of energy. I've got to
say that you've inspired myself on the stuff that you're
doing and the energy that you bring to the table,
bring to the room here, and I can imagine the
impact that you're having on the people that you're speaking to.
And I just want to take a moment to reflect
with what Jordan did, how would he be feeling about
(54:36):
what you guys are doing there.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
It's all very worthwhile question to ask. And this is
the power of it. We'll never know. That's the sadness
of it, but it's also the power of it. I
think that's best answered by saying, what would our discussions
be had he survived? And I think he would be
(55:01):
the type of person that would be trying to make
it right in whatever way that he could possibly make
it right. So I guess that's what we're doing, you know,
because I think that that, deep down would be what
he would do if he was here with us.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Well, you guys have said you've carried the guilt and
shame and what you're doing, And I could argue the
toss about the guilt and shame, like there's victims in
all sorts of things, and you guys have victims in
this is Yeah, I'll choose my words carefully here, but
I'll just say you guys are victims in this as well,
(55:40):
but you're carrying that guilt and shame and the work
that you're doing and what you're giving back to the community.
I'm just in awe.
Speaker 4 (55:47):
Of Really, I guess we're victims of Jordan's choices. But
you know, through this whole process, we just don't seek sympathy.
It is just all reserved for Jordan's victims families and
Jordan's victims families, And can I just take a moment
to say Gary for someone who has a son that
created so much carnage, for all of those responding officers,
those police officers that were there on the night the ambos,
(56:09):
as far as those poor police that had to turn
up on our door and do the death knot like,
thank you for all your services that you've done. We
think about it, and I take the opportunity all the
time to thank those services for what they do, because
you have to clean up decisions like this day in
day out, and I always think, how on earth do
you go home at night? Like can you unsee something
(56:30):
that you've seen? So thank you for all the work
that you've done. In your career and for.
Speaker 3 (56:34):
What you're doing now, yes, it's deeply meaningful.
Speaker 1 (56:38):
Well, I think get creating the platform and just take
on board what you say for the first responders, and
I see what they go through and it's difficult, but
we're trying to limit that as much as possible that
it can happen regardless what I'm doing there what I'm
finding inspiration from, because when I left the cops of
(56:59):
sort of who've seen? Where do I find purpose from
what I was doing? But this is allowed. Doing the
podcast here has given me a platform to allow people
like yourselves a voice and a platform to say what
you're doing. And I think you're making a bigger difference
than I could have ever in the police. And you
(57:20):
change the actions of one person, and you've seen the
ramifications or the ripple effect from one person. You just
change one person and allow them to avoid what you
guys have had to go for. That's making a huge difference.
So I suppose we're all sitting here, I'm complimenting you guys.
That's what I just want to say. I think the
(57:40):
work that you're doing is absolutely tremendous, and keep up
the good work and.
Speaker 4 (57:45):
Difference thank you for keeping me company with your podcast
because I'm in my car all the time and I
listen to you, so thank you for keeping me company
for so many hours while I'm driving.
Speaker 1 (57:53):
Oh, an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Thank you, Thanks Gary.
Speaker 3 (57:56):
Thanks Mate.
Speaker 4 (58:00):
The Friend.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
Later at NAT
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