February 25, 1970 – my life forever changed.
Simple driver error took the life of an 18 year old friend of the family and set my life on a path of higher education and training for driving. Not only did my parents raise the bar on the type of training they felt would keep me safe, I’ve been exposed to professional training throughout my life which has enabled me to drive 47 years now, nearly 2 million miles in 4 different countries on everything with rubber tires without a single incident or scratch on a vehicle.
But the 1970 crash wasn’t the only one that impacted my life. Over the years, I’ve been exposed to numerous crash scenes where I was either 1st, 2nd or 3rd on the scene and in some cases, either helped the injured or assisted in removing a dead teen from a wrecked vehicle. In my late 40’s it became clear that I needed to get involved in teen driving safety and do something to make in difference and attempt to save these lives.
In 2010, I founded a non-profit organization called Teen Driving Solutions School which teaches advanced training to teen drivers and their parents through classroom education to help them think differently about driving, exposure to a maintenance clinic to teach them more about the cars they drive and provide them with several hours of behind the wheel training in a safe controlled environment to teach them car control techniques, principles and skills. To date, over 98% of the graduates from this program remain incident free up to 4 years after completing the program.
And we’re not done. My mission in life is to “forever remove driving as the number one cause of death for teenagers in America” and so our story continues. Josh Shipp said it best when he said, “Every child is only one decision away from becoming a statistic. But every child is only One Caring Adult away from becoming a success story” I hope our mission encourages some of you to become that One Caring Adult who changes the life of a teenage driver!