Spring is around the corner, and it won’t be long before it’s prom and graduation seasons for many high schoolers. Rites of passage for many, these are times for teens to celebrate, but can also be times of poor decision-making, especially when vehicles are involved. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that 2,524 teen drivers and passengers were killed and 177,000 were injured in 2013. Twenty-seven percent of these fatalities occurred between April and June, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
“The statistics are staggering, especially when you consider that most of these accidents and fatalities are preventable,” said Randy Petro, Mercury Insurance’s chief claims officer. “We don’t want any families to suffer through the loss of a child, so Mercury is taking action with the launch of the ‘Mercury Insurance Drive Safe Challenge.’”
The Mercury Insurance Drive Safe Challenge kicked off with a free defensive driving program, which included hands-on driving skills training and classroom material. An interactive website provides teens with detailed instruction, as well as gives parents the tools to shape responsible driving behavior.
To view the multimedia release go to:
http://www.multivu.com/players/English/7772251-mercury-teen-drive-safe-challenge/
The Attention Powered Car, developed by
the RAC, is into leg 3 of its road trip around WA visiting towns
including Donnybrook, Nannup and Pemberton, heading to Albany and then
finishing in the Wheatbelt town of Narrogin. In this
episode we put two drivers behind the wheel that drive for a living. We
wanted to see if their professional experience influenced their
attention levels. How will our Ambo and Australia's best truck driver
perform? First up was Mike. As a St John's Ambulance
Volunteer, he needs to be calm and confident driving under pressure and
at high speed. And it showed. So too with our second driver, Murray,
who's TNT Australia's best truck driver. Both came out determined and
focused to prove they had the edge. To some degree they did. Incidences
of inattention were fewer and further between, but they were still
there. Encouragingly, both drivers were much better at refocusing when
they did lose attention. Check out this webisode to see
just how they performed, as well as what insights we are finding about
driver inattention as we take the Attention Powered Car through
southern WA.
Six terminally ill teenagers are given a second chance at life when their consciousnesses are uploaded into the bodies of weaponized robots in order to fight Sigma, a dangerously advanced artificial intelligence program threatening world domination. Find out more at http://www.markalpert.com/ #TheSix YA
