According to the National Highway Traffic Administration, nearly 5,300 teens died in car crashes in 2005. The NHTSA also says drivers 16 to 19 years old are four times as likely as older drivers to get into crashes. But a nationwide effort to save young lives kicks off this Saturday at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.
Tire Rack Street Survival(R) is a national driver education program aimed at teaching young drivers the skills they need to keep themselves and others alive on the road. Fifty weekend classes are planned in cities and towns around the country. They generally run from 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., and are open to permitted and licensed drivers ages 16 – 21. The cost is $60 per student and some insurance companies offer premium discounts to graduates. A schedule and registration forms can be found at here.
Unlike traditional high school driver education programs based on classroom theory and simple maneuvers, the Tire Rack Street Survival(R) program improves driver competence through hands-on exercises based on real-world driving situations. Teenagers learn from experienced driving instructors how their actions govern a car’s responses, what the limits of their vehicles are, and how to avoid accidents entirely. Unlike other advanced driving schools, students use their own vehicles so that the skills they learn can be directly translated to their own daily driving experiences.
Tire Rack Street Survival classes are run by local, skilled driving enthusiasts, many with teenagers of their own, who have come together to reduce the number of car crashes caused by inexperience and unnecessary risk taking.
Formed by the BMW Car Club of America Foundation (http://www.bmwccafoundation.org/), the Street Survival(R) safe teen driving program (http://www.streetsurvival.org/) was launched in April 2002 with the help of several corporate sponsors. Street Survival(R) is built upon the premise that ‘safe driving is learned by doing,’ and teaches students to avoid accidents by thinking and looking ahead. Street Survival(R) is unique in that it offers students instruction in their own cars so that they learn the limitations of their every day vehicle.
The Tire Rack, family-owned and headquartered in South Bend, Indiana, is America’s largest independent tire tester and consumer-direct source for tires, wheels and performance accessories. The team of 90-plus Test Drivers test tires from every major tire manufacturer on the company’s state-of-the-art, 10-acre test facility. The findings are then posted on the company’s website, http://www.tirerack.com/, where consumers can make an educated decision on a tire, wheel or performance accessory purchase. The Tire Rack has also collected results from more than 124,000 consumer surveys representing over two-billion miles of real-world tire data, the largest known cache of such information anywhere.
Since 1979, The Tire Rack has grown from a single-point retail store in Indianapolis to encompass over 1.5 million square feet of warehouse space in five states. A diverse and broad in-stock inventory from 16 major tire and 31 wheel brands can be delivered anywhere in the country in two days or less. A national network of more than 4,800 independent Recommended Installers are available to service customers’ local installation needs.