Teen Driving Forum: Dodge Teams With AutoWeek to Promote Safety

By Jim Yetter
Senior Manager, Dodge Marketing

One of the biggest concerns a parent can have is putting their child behind the wheel of an automobile for the first time. You’ve seen your son or daughter through a lot of challenges, but thinking of them out on the road with their rookie driving skills can leave you feeling helpless. With this in mind, AutoWeek magazine recently hosted the first ever Teen Safety Summit at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., just up the road from Chrysler’s global headquarters.

Listen to the experts, see the statistics and you’re astounded. As one of the guest speakers noted … in the last four years 3,600 soldiers have been killed in Iraq. That is a fact that grips the nation and creates heated debates and high public attention. Now consider that 26,000 teenagers have died in traffic accidents in the U.S. during that same period. Traffic accidents are the #1 cause of teenage deaths and most of those accidents are single vehicle …in other words they lost control of their own car.

Dodge had the honor of being the sponsor partner of the event. The purpose of the event was to raise awareness of the high casualty and accident rate among teen driving and find better ways to train teen drivers. Needless to say, the event was sold out with people coming from all over the nation …. Florida, California, Texas. Tons of parents with their teenagers … both ready to do this together.

I talked with many of them during the day. Most had teen friends or relatives that had a bad accident that kind of woke them up to the need for better teen driver training. We have a lot of young drivers out there in Dodges and many more interested in our new entries like Caliber and Nitro so it makes sense to get involved to help on this topic. This was a day I’ll remember for a long time. It was inspirational and educational. Surprising and maddening. I felt both sad and angry. As the father of three great kids (22, 19, and 16) this event hit close to home.

Past NHTSA administrator Dr. Ricardo Martinez and driver training experts from Skip Barber Racing, Petty Enterprises, Bondurant Performance Driving School, Drivers Edge and MasterDrive provided a great perspective on the need to provide more in-depth training for teen drivers. And don’t get the idea that since these people were from performance driving schools, they don’t understand safety. Each specializes in safe driving technique courses as well, with the Petty National Safe Driving Program being developed in partnership with Clemson University’s Automotive Safety Research Institute. The emphasis at this event was on training to respond to the unexpected and to understand the hazards and potential consequences.

For parents, we looked at how to know if your teenager is ready to drive … and how to take control if they’re not. We held discussions of how to handle a car on wet roads, on ice, on gravel, using emergency avoidance maneuvers, and dozens of other topics. After a morning of talking, presenting, sharing ideas and perspectives, participants went out to get some hands-on driving experience from the Petty Driving School instructors. The afternoon was filled with on-road learning in a controlled environment. Everyone said they had a blast. The really cool part is, I’m sure a good chunk of the teenagers that participated won’t have that accident they were going to have. I’d like to believe we saved some lives and made a difference that day.

If you listen to the experts, there’s no doubt we did.