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June 12, 2008
A team of racing professionals – including many current and former IndyCar, NASCAR, drifting and sportscar drivers – will offer free driving tips to young drivers aged 15-to-21 at Foxboro Stadium June 28 and 29.
Driver’s Edge is a non-profit organization based in Las Vegas that this year has added Foxboro to its schedule of some 40 cities. To date, some 50,000 teenagers and their parents have taken the course which includes classroom and hands-on training.
The course is “designed to alter young driver attitudes and behavior and to serve as a “wake-up call” to help erase the video game mentality that is common among many of today’s young drivers,” according to a news statement.
Founder and president Jeff Payne said he founded the non-profit in 2002 because he was frustrated with what he perceived to be inadequacies in training young drivers.
“Everyone blames the kids,” he said in a recent interview. “Everyone points fingers at the kids, but they have never been taught to drive.”
“They’ve been taught to pass a test, and that’s good, but they are not prepared for the hazards of everyday life,” he said. “They’ve never received the proper training.”
The training is divided into four separate groups scheduled for morning or afternoon sessions on the Saturday and Sunday. Each session has space for 100 students, but the program tends to fill up fast. In addition, Payne says he encourages parents to attend.
Course and registration details are available at www.driversedge.org.
Driver’s Edge’s four-and-a-half-hour course is similar to the training offered by Boston-based In Control (incontroladt.com), which offers $300 courses at five locations in the area, including Seekonk Speedway where it conducted courses last Wednesday and Thursday.
In Control is smaller, having trained some 7,500 students since it was founded in 2002, according to spokesman Sean Martin.
In Control founder Brandon Bogart said his company offers training in such real-life problems as tailgating which he said was a major cause of accidents, especially among teenagers.
Payne, a former race car driver, said he supported all efforts to educate teenagers, including the courses offered by In Control and the Skip Barber Racing School (the nearest is at Lime Rock Park).
But he said he wanted Driver’s Edge to be free – “I did not want to be tearing my hair out worrying whether enough kids had registered,” he said – and found a major supporter in Bridgestone Tires.
“How can we help you, what do we do,” he said Bridgestone asked him and the company has been a national sponsor ever since.
“Driving,” Payne said, “continues to get more difficult for kids.”
He said teenagers need a car and it’s a sense of freedom for both parents who don’t have to drive them and for the teens who are on their own.
Meanwhile, “there are more and more distractions,” he said, citing iPods and cell phones. “It’s getting worse and worse.”
He said statistically, young male drivers make up 75 percent of the fatalities while young female drivers, who drive slower but are often distracted, make up over 50 percent of the injuries.
“With guys, it’s peer pressure,” he said, noting they tend to egg each other on with such famous last words as: “Come on, Dude, you can catch the light.”
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth 
at 1:58 PM to Safety
, Teenage Drivers
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