by Kenneth C. Mills & Devon K. Mills

The best way to describe our new ProFleet driver education course is show our first student reviews. The 50 students range in age from 16-78 and drive all types of vehicle—from young teens in sports cars, school bus drivers, truck drivers, minivan Moms and elderly SUV drivers. The 50 students were referred by the district court due to minor traffic infractions. The ProFleet course replaced our traditional course for court referrals.

We listened to over 7000 customers by analyzing the feedback from our traditional course. Our goal was to gain a better understanding of what would be meaningful to today's drivers. We think we have produced an engaging and highly relevant course to reduce crash risk. However, safety messages, no matter how well crafted, do not have an impact on driving behavior if the student doesn't find them useful. As you will read, our diverse customers are chatting and giving opinions as they become familiar with the new curriculum.

The new course (June 25, 2010) has a simplified yet expanded text, with chat, surveys, videos, individualized attitude feedback, and room for comments. You can learn more about the course at www.alertdriver.com. Because new research shows a decrease in crash rates with extended safety discussions, our goal was to keep students engaged with on-line instruction and discussion relevant to their driving.

All of the first 50 students gave the course positive reviews. The 30 males had a mean age of 35.8 years and the 20 female students had a mean age of 30.2 years. The mean age for all students was 33.6 years.

There were 15 chat items in the course of instruction during which students were required to enter examples from their own road experience. Forty eight of the students participated with enthusiasm about how the material applied to their own driving. Many of the examples were so creative and applicable, we will insert them as course content. For example: