November 25, 2024, Durham, NC – iRT is dedicated to preventing distracted and impaired driving and helping drivers, prevention professionals, and community members protect themselves and others on the road. Plan My Ride is iRT’s interactive, multimedia, eLearning program developed with and for young drivers to teach safe driving skills to prevent distracted and impaired driving. Unlike other safe driving educational programs, Plan My Ride uses a science-backed and theory-driven approach to change behavior by teaching concrete, practical strategies to avoid impaired and distracted driving, and providing opportunities for young drivers to practice the skills they have learned in 360-degree virtual scenarios. The program is accessible on mobile devices and computers to meet teens where they are.
This article is the seventh in a series of articles describing how each lesson of the Plan My Ride program was strategically designed to help young drivers learn important information and strategies to prevent distracted and impaired driving.
Plan My Ride Lesson 7: Communicate to Stay Safe
Learning effective communication skills is a key way that young people can prevent distracted and impaired driving. By communicating effectively as either a driver or passenger, young people can maintain control over their own safety. For example, communicating may help a young person prevent getting in the vehicle with someone who has been drinking. In addition, young people may wonder what to say to a driver they are riding with to get them to stop texting and driving.
The goals of Lesson 7 of Plan My Ride are to teach young people how to communicate responsibly and effectively as a driver or passenger, so they can make safe, responsible decisions.
Setting rules as a driver.
Lesson 7 begins by teaching young drivers how to set rules for themselves and their passengers when they are driving. A main goal of the lesson is to empower young drivers and remind them that they oversee what goes on in the vehicle when they are driving. Young drivers learn that it is important to set and enforce rules for passengers when they are driving to help everyone remain safe. For example, drivers may set a rule that all passengers must wear a seatbelt while in the car or that passengers must help the driver navigate to the destination so the driver is not distracted by navigating systems. The lesson also encourages young people to think of rules ahead of time, so they can communicate them up front with passengers.
Learning to be a responsible passenger.
Another main goal of Lesson 7 is to teach young people their responsibilities as a passenger. The lesson explains that riding with an impaired driver is equally as dangerous as being an impaired driver. However, the program reminds young drivers that even though they may feel powerless as a passenger, they can have a strong influence over how a driver acts.
Young people learn several ways that they can be responsible passengers, such as by offering to navigate to the destination or and handle the music, offering to read the driver’s texts for them, paying attention to the road along with the driver, and keeping other passengers accountable so they do not distract the driver. The lesson also explains that it is a sign of self-respect for a passenger to set boundaries with a driver or share when a driver’s behavior makes them uncomfortable. Young people receive specific examples of things they can say to a driver who is using their phone, so they are ready to speak up for their own safety.
Preparing to avoid riding with an impaired driver.
As part of Lesson 7, young people learn to use their planning and refusal skills to prevent riding with an impaired driver. For example, they learn to plan an alternate ride ahead of time if they are afraid a driver they plan to ride with may become impaired. They also learn to assess if a driver seems impaired before riding with them and to ask a driver if they have used alcohol or drugs before getting in the vehicle.
The lesson encourages young people to speak up if they notice signs of impairment in a driver during their drive and to firmly refuse riding with someone who seems impaired. The program provides specific examples of things young people can say if they want to refuse a ride from someone or to convince an impaired friend not to drive.
Lesson 7 concludes with a brief knowledge-check quiz to test drivers’ knowledge of the safe driving strategies they learned throughout the lesson. The knowledge-check quiz is designed to promote reflection and retention of information within the program in learners. The number of correct and incorrect answers to the knowledge-check quiz questions can be viewed by teachers or other program administrators to determine if additional instruction or follow-up training is needed to build mastery of the knowledge taught in the program.
If you are interested in offering the Plan My Ride program to young drivers to prevent impaired and distracted driving, visit https://planmyride.net/ to learn more and get started.