Teen Driver Safety Program Coming To Rosemount

Tire Rack Street Survival Teen Driving School is going to be at the Dakota County Tech College, 1300 145th St. E., Rosemount, Minnesota, on Saturday, February 27 from 8:30AM to 4PM.

Car crashes are the leading killer of American teens from ages 15-20, with more than 5,000 teens involved in a fatal crash each year and an additional 196,000 injured.

This is according to Tire Rack Street Survival, a 501c3 organization and the largest active nonprofit national driver education program that teaches teens the skills they need to stay alive behind the wheel. Unlike traditional driver’s education programs based on classroom theory and simple maneuvers, the Tire Rack Street Survival program improves driver competence through hands-on experiences in real-world driving situations. Here's what you get if you take the program.

• Students will receive a short classroom session and then will learn, hands-on, how to manage everyday driving hazards, obstacles and challenges in a controlled environment on an advanced driving course to ultimately "arrive alive."
• Students learn emergency braking and skid control, how to control proper braking, and how to avoid accidents entirely. In select schools, in addition to spending time in the driver’s seat of a parked 18-wheeler to fully comprehend its massive blind spots, teenagers witness the violent detonation of an air bag, which reinforces proper hand placement on the steering wheel.

Students are taught in their own cars, not specially prepared program vehicles, so the skills they learn can be directly translated to their daily driving experiences. The program challenges teenagers to understand how to control a vehicle, rather than just operate one.

The program is open to licensed and permitted drivers ages 15-21. Forms, schedules and more information can be found online at www.streetsurvival.org. The cost is $75 per student and some insurance companies offer premium discounts to graduates.

The program is in its 14th year, having trained 17,200 new drivers. One hundred schools were completed in 2015 and the goal for 2016 is more than 125 nationally.