News

Local teens put driving skills to test for big bucks

By SHEILA BOUGHNER

It isn't every day teenagers get a chance at winning $1,000.

But 19 juniors and seniors from area high schools had a shot at the $1,000 first-place, $500 second-place and $300 dollar third-place prizes in the Venango-Forest Regional Teen Driving Competition Wednesday at the Rocky Grove fire hall.

All area juniors and seniors who have been driving for a year without accidents or moving violations were eligible to participate. After taking a pre-test at their school, those with the top three scores moved on to the competition Wednesday.

There, they learned a number of lessons about safe driving and put their skills to the test on a written exam, a distracted driving simulation and a slow-speed driving course.

For the distracted driving simulation, students sat at station outfitted with a steering wheel, gas and brake pedals. The road rolled out ahead of them on a video monitor, and as they drove along, various distractions were added to the mix: a ball rolling into the street, two deer crossing the road, and most distracting, the voice of a female passenger, who provided directions and made suggestions (such as asking the driver to text her brother).

At every station, students received useful advice.

At the simulator, they were told that "anybody not wearing a seatbelt is the most dangerous thing in the car" if there is an accident and were advised to require all their passengers to buckle up.

They also learned about insurance rates, and what can drive them up and what can bring them down, from State Farm insurance agents Roger Baker, Sandy Hovis and Joan Lipinski, who provided the top prizes.

In the parking lot, the real driving test required students to complete a variety of driving maneuvers including passing through a serpentine course marked by cones without stopping and passing the driver's side wheels through a narrow path marked by tennis balls balanced on pedestals.

Every error, bumped cone or displaced tennis ball resulted in deductions from the driver's score.

The students also had to examine a parked vehicle for defects that might impact safety, such as a cracked tail light.

A. Crivelli provided the vehicles used for the event.

While in the parking lot, the students also had the chance to climb into the cabs of two trucks, one from Engles Trucking and the other from Con-way Freight.

One offered the students a chance to see how long-haul truckers live and to check out the bunk area behind the driver's seat.

The other truck was surrounded by police vehicles, parked in the truck's blind spots. From the driver's seat and the view in the mirrors, it appeared as if the truck was all alone.

"When you get in that truck, you see nothing," truck driver Dale Knox of the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association (PMTA), one of the organizers of the event, told the students. "But you've got cars all around you. That's what I see every day."

"All of you are champions," Knox told the students at the start of the day. "You drove a whole year without an accident. That's great. But every year, the challenges get bigger. Take what you learn today, take it to heart and take it back and share it with the other students."

At the end of the day, the winners included Wesley Schettler of West Forest High School in first place, Haley Nerlich of Rocky Grove High School in second place and Jonathan Verhoff of Venango Catholic High School in third place.

As the top finisher, Schettler will go on to the state competition, where he will have a shot at $5,000, $3,000 and $2,000 scholarships.

Participants also included Kelton Burkhart, Caleb Carrow and Kylie Mason of Cranberry; Daniel DiCorpo of East Forest; Casey Boyer, Faxon Hadden-Maxwell and Quinn Heffern of Franklin; Evan Carll, Sydney Eisenman and Michael Moon of Oil City; Samantha Metzgar and Shawn Wise of Rocky Grove; Larissa Schwab and Alexis O'Toole of West Forest; and Jennifer Peterson and Corry Schettler of Venango Catholic.

Every participant received a medal, a T-shirt and a 75-piece vehicle emergency kit, provided by the Department of Health's Northwest Regional Highway Safety Network.

While the event, organized by the Venango and Forest county sheriff's departments, was the first teen driving competition for the two local counties, the competitions began in 1991 through the efforts of the PMTA and are held in a dozen regions across the state.

Knox said this year's events will mark the sixth for Erie County and the third for Crawford County.

"And they are growing," he said. "What better way of educating our students than when they are just starting out driving?"

Geoffrey T. Crankshaw, project coordinator for the Northwest Regional Highway Safety Network, said the hope is that the participants will model the safe driving behavior for younger students "and show them there are rewards for that."

Sponsors also included Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and East Central AAA.

Originally published in The Derrick on April 19, 2012.