Life can change in the second it takes for a bear to run out in the road, a car\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfterwards, his friends really wished they\u2019d had an opportunity\u2026 to talk to other kids that could help them understand these kinds of horrible things could actually happen to them,\u201d said Taylor White\u2019s mother, Carol White.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
After a few years, however, the group decided to move on to \u201cgiving kids skills, knowledge and experience in behaviors that could help protect them from some of these high risk behaviors,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n
In 2013, they brought a technical driving school to Juneau for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really successful,\u201d White said. \u201cThe parents and the kids both felt like they really gained a lot from doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was also expensive \u2014 it cost the organization $45,000 the first time, though they make it available to kids for free \u2014 so it took a few years for it to happen again. This time, they\u2019re bringing a school from Tacoma. Some of the stations \u2014 with the help of a Glacier Gardens golf card and goggles from the Juneau Police Department \u2014 give the kids experience of driving under the influence.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids are pretty impressed with how they can\u2019t find the brake pedal with that kind of distortion,\u201d White said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s just vision \u2014 your thinking is fine. So that was a pretty powerful station.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other stations deter kids from distracted driving \u2014 like driving while texting \u2014 or give them practice using an emergency brake while on a skid pad, with sudden braking, or with accident avoidance on a slalom course.<\/p>\n
JDHS grad Gunnar Schultz was one of the 98 kids who signed up last time. The course \u201cshows you the limits of a car,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely just kind of shows you that your car can do more than you think,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have definitely been a couple of times I\u2019ve gone around a corner in two wheel drive and have to reel it back in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ve probably used it (the training) more than I think about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The training was also much more fun than he expected, Schultz said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen parents bring this type of stuff up, it\u2019s something that a kid is probably like \u2018Oh, whatever, I know how to drive,\u2019\u201d Schultz said. \u201cI would say more than anything, it\u2019s pretty fun to get to do that type of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the course is free, the foundation does ask for $100 to reserve a kid\u2019s spot. That\u2019s refunded when a kid shows up.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The training is May 14 and 15. Go to http:\/\/www.taylorwhite.org\/training for more information and to register.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly managing editor Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Life can change in the second it takes for a bear to run out in the road, a car\u2019s 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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":32851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-32850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32850"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=32850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}