By Lindsay Hawthorne
The roads were treacherous on Saturday the 29th of October as parents drove their teens to the free safe driving course given by Toyota, which was held at Seymour High School.
Toyota Driving Expectations is a program that has been held in numerous locations since 2004. The course is two and a half hours long and its purpose is to teach teens to be safer drivers.
This opportunity for teens came specifically to Seymour High School because the physical education teacher there won the first prize the Toyota Teen Driver Educator Challenge.
The goal of the course is to give teens a hands-on experience behind the wheel and give them a chance to learn from experienced drivers. Also, the course shows parents ways to be better driving coaches and mentors for their children.
“Our key goal is to save lives,” stated Karen Polan, Toyota representative. “It’s a unique experience, giving the kids a chance to do maneuvers that they wouldn’t normally be able to do. They learn about crash-avoidance, the anti-lock breaking system [ABS] and the dangers of distracted driving”.
The teens learned about distracted driving through a presentation featuring a car simulation with appearance of an arcade game, in which a Toyota employee drove the “car” while wearing glasses with a camera in them. A screen showed the road the man was virtually driving on, and what he was seeing through the glasses.
This innovative simulation enabled teens to witness how simple tasks such as drinking water and reading directions restrict the vision of people while they are driving and may cause them to swerve.
The course also usually allows teens to drive through a course of cones and learn about sudden stops and starts from experienced drivers, but on the 29th the afternoon sessions were snowed out at Seymour High.
Since a good four or five inches of snow was building up during the lesson, the teens and parents did not drive. Instead, the teens sat in the passenger seats while experienced former racecar drivers drove them through the snowy parking lot.
The teens experienced the feeling of the ABS and traction control systems. They also learned how to drive safely in slippery conditions.
Despite the snow and loss of power in the school towards the end of the lesson, the Toyota Driving Expectations course was able to enlighten teens and parents about defensive driving.
Polan said, “Manufacturers build the most advanced safety devices in cars to keep drivers safe, but the most important safety device in any car is the hands on the wheel, the parent and the teen, and that’s why we are here, trying to create safer roads.”
