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Giving Teens a Driving Edge

Free accident avoidance class teaches real-life behind-the-wheel survival skills

The usual driver's education course doesn't prepare teens for dangerous situations, where their skills and the vehicle are on the edge of disaster like an out-of-control car that doesn't respond to panic steering and braking. Former racecar driver Jeff Payne, founder of Driver's Edge, wants teens to be in control of their vehicle — particularly in panic situations. He is taking a dozen professional drivers on a national tour of 13 cities around the country to provide real-life training for young drivers that could save their lives and will certainly add to their driving skills.

Driver's Edge

Every hour of every day someone is killed by a teenage driver. Driver's Edge, a nonprofit program with an MTV flavor, is doing something to turn around those statistics by teaching teens crash-avoidance skills. The program offers two 4-hour morning and afternoon sessions with 75 students in each session. There is classroom instruction as well as crash-avoidance practice on a road course set up on a closed parking lot. On the course, with an instructor in the car, teens must maneuver through skids, conduct evasive lane changes, and demonstrate emergency braking and control a car after a tire blowout. Driver's Ed was never this much fun or this relevant.

With the aid of sponsors like Bridgestone tires, the 2004 Driver's Edge National Tour offers for free an accident-avoidance curriculum that costs well over $400 at many racetracks.

Test-In, Test-Out

At the beginning of the program students are tested on their driving knowledge, then retested at the end to see how much they've learned. Students usually answer 33 percent of the questions on how the vehicle operates — how the braking system works, etc. — at the start of the program, but by the end, their correct answers are up to 85 percent.

In the corporate training programs that Payne runs for the PGA Tour, Hilton Hotels, Disney, McDonalds and the U.S. Air Force, they record an 80-percent reduction in crashes among graduates. Payne predicts that there will be at least a 35-percent reduction in life-threatening crashes among the teens who take his course.

Pro Instruction

Payne has been a professional driver and instructor for 19 years, training thousands of drivers in accident avoidance skills, anti-terrorist and performance driving. Tom Cruise, Charlie Sheen, Walter Payton, Jon Bon Jovi and Emilio Estevez are all graduates of Payne's programs.

Testimonials on the web site from parents who have enrolled their teens in the program report a great experience and one that has had lifesaving effects. One Baltimore teen took the course and then returned to his university in Rochester, NY. On the way back to campus he was able to maneuver safely through a chain-reaction accident to the center median strip. The minivan behind him rolled over and many other vehicles around him were involved in crashes.

Drivers must be between the ages of 15 and 21 to enroll and must have a valid permit or license at the time of the class. Each student under age 18 must have a parent or guardian complete a parental consent form and mail or fax the consent form to Driver's Edge or they can bring the original to the class. Classes are filled on a first-come first-served basis. Students may register to attend the event by calling Driver's Edge toll-free at 1-877-633-EDGE, but the best way is to register online at www.driversedge.org. Space is limited and it goes fast.

Check out the Drivers Edge program at www.driversedge.org.