Are You Scared of the Dark Games

There are several renditions of this – pick the one that you like best!

• Two teams of students
• Two areas – one dark and one lit, or 1 area and take turns
• A flashlight
• Items that can be placed around the room or in a box pertaining to nighttime driving. This can be ‘night’ objects (a bat, pillow, toothbrush, etc.), printed pictures, TDS items, or whatever you decide.
• Invisible ink pens with lights (option 3 below).

1. Divide into 2 teams. One team will be finding objects placed in the “day” (lights on) and one will be finding items at “night” (lights off).
2. Place items around the area while the teams are not looking.
3. Let one team search for the items for 30 seconds in the “dark” with lights off, using a flashlight.
4. Count how many items they found.
5. Replace the items.
6. Give the second team 30 seconds to find items with the lights on.
7. Count how many items they found.
8. Announce the winner and discuss the difficulty of ‘nighttime’ searching vs. ‘daytime’. Relate it to driving.
   1. Did the team members bump into any objects or other people when searching?
9. Post photos of your activity on your social media channels to further promote the message of safe driving and tag @teensdriverseat so we can see your great work, too.
10. Submit an online activity form at t-driver.com to get credit for your efforts.

Option 2:

You can also do this with boxes. You will need two identical sets of items. Place one set of items in a shallow box for one team, and one set in a deep, dark box. Call out an item and have teams race to see who can locate the item first. You can do this for several rounds then discuss how much more difficult it is to find the items in the deep box because of poor visibility. Relate this to driving and talk about how you can assist the driver at nighttime by keeping your eyes open and being alert.

Option 3:

Using an invisible ink pen, write nighttime driving safety questions on sheets of paper and answers on other pieces of paper. Give each team a blue light (on the provided pens) and teams must match the correct answers to the questions using the lights. The first team who answers all correctly wins.

• Conduct this activity during the Nighttime Driving Risk Unit.
• Celebrate the winners by awarding them night glow sticks.