Mars O’Neill is a producer and a host of ThinkFast Interactive. an organization that entertains students while enforcing the laws and the safety of driving a vehicle.
He has a simple message that he delivers to high school students who are on the cusp of sitting behind a wheel.
“We have to share the road with them so we want everyone to be safe,” he said.
He and his partner, Tobias Moses, were on stage to enlighten and produce a lively presentation on what you should focus on—and not your cell phones—when you are operating a vehicle.
Their audience was the entire sophomore class of Bridgewater-Raritan High School on Tuesday, September 19.
The Class of 2026, all 700 strong, crammed into the high school’s auditorium to engage in an assembly that boasted a robust presentation that featured trivia and dance contests while DJ Moses played the popular songs that kept the students entertained.
Those are the goals of ThinkFast, which is headquartered in Michigan
According to ThinkFast Interactive’s website:
ThinkFast was developed in 1997 as a program that would non-intrusively expose participants to and educate them on important information on hard-to-tackle topics, i.e. the consequences of underage drinking, drug use, bullying, traffic safety distracted driving, etc., while simultaneously entertaining them in a safe, relaxed and fun environment. The goal was to use our expertise in entertainment production to develop an interesting educational program that would directly engage hundreds of individuals for the entire duration of the presentation.
While the students enjoyed the contests—the winning team’s members received a $100 gift card to Amazon–-the mission was to stress how to be safe on the road.
“It is very important that we teach them all about safe driving,” Mr. O’Neill claimed.
This was a return affair for ThinkFast Interactive to Bridgewater-Raritan, which according to DJ Moses , is one of about “100 schools we visit in our region (Northeast) a year.’’
“We had such a success with ThinkFast last year and we had the ability to do it again with what was left over from our grant (from the Traffic Safety Program from Somerset and Hunterdon counties and the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office),’’ explained Kathy DeBonis, who, along with her fellow Health and Physical Education Teachers at the high school, sponsored the assembly. “Last year we broke it into two sessions but this year just one so we have the entire sophomore class here.’’
“It was one hour of high energy,” Ms. DeBonis declared.
Dave Guglietti, who is the Supervisor of Health and Physical Education for the Bridgewater- Raritan Regional School District, applauded the staff for presenting an assembly that will prepare the young and eager drivers for their road tests.
“The Driver’s Ed teachers did an incredible job bringing ThinkFast to BRHS last year. We had such a positive response after the presentations, we knew we wanted to have them back again,” Mr. Guglietti said. ‘’This year, we are even more excited about the program, because it is taking place before the MVC State Test. Our hope, in addition to safety, is this will help prepare our students for the test and even more than they already are.”
