Life can change in the second it takes for a bear to run out in the road, a car’s tires to slip on ice, or a drunk person to get behind the wheel. The Taylor White Foundation for Advancing Our Community, Inc., wants to give teenage drivers the skills they need to handle that second.
The foundation is named for Taylor White, who died June 5, 2009, as a passenger in a drunk driving accident while out with his friends. He had just graduated Juneau-Douglas High School days earlier.
“Afterwards, his friends really wished they’d had an opportunity… to talk to other kids that could help them understand these kinds of horrible things could actually happen to them,” said Taylor White’s mother, Carol White.
That was the start of the foundation. For the first few years, it worked on prevention, like the display of the wrecked car around town, or the documentary it completed the year after Taylor’s death.
After a few years, however, the group decided to move on to “giving kids skills, knowledge and experience in behaviors that could help protect them from some of these high risk behaviors,” White said.
In 2013, they brought a technical driving school to Juneau for the first time.
“It was really successful,” White said. “The parents and the kids both felt like they really gained a lot from doing that.”
It was also expensive — it cost the organization $45,000 the first time, though they make it available to kids for free — so it took a few years for it to happen again. This time, they’re bringing a school from Tacoma. Some of the stations — with the help of a Glacier Gardens golf card and goggles from the Juneau Police Department — give the kids experience of driving under the influence.
“Kids are pretty impressed with how they can’t find the brake pedal with that kind of distortion,” White said. “And that’s just vision — your thinking is fine. So that was a pretty powerful station.”
Other stations deter kids from distracted driving — like driving while texting — or give them practice using an emergency brake while on a skid pad, with sudden braking, or with accident avoidance on a slalom course.
JDHS grad Gunnar Schultz was one of the 98 kids who signed up last time. The course “shows you the limits of a car,” he said.
“It definitely just kind of shows you that your car can do more than you think,” he said.
He especially remembers the slalom course and having to recover from a skid after pulling the emergency brake, he said, something he found important, especially somewhere winters can be icy.
“There have definitely been a couple of times I’ve gone around a corner in two wheel drive and have to reel it back in,” he said.
Another time, he was driving home in the dark and had to slam on the brakes when a bear walked in front of his car.
“I think I’ve probably used it (the training) more than I think about,” he said.
The training was also much more fun than he expected, Schultz said.
“When parents bring this type of stuff up, it’s something that a kid is probably like ‘Oh, whatever, I know how to drive,’” Schultz said. “I would say more than anything, it’s pretty fun to get to do that type of stuff.”
Though the course is free, the foundation does ask for $100 to reserve a kid’s spot. That’s refunded when a kid shows up.
This time, around 100 kids have already signed up, with room for 144. Thirty-six kids participate in each four-hour session. Each has nine cars and nine instructors, for a four to one ratio of students to instructors, White said.
The training is May 14 and 15. Go to http://www.taylorwhite.org/training for more information and to register.
• Contact Capital City Weekly managing editor Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com.
