Distracted Driving Programs: Arrive Alive Tour At Tri-County Regional

The Arrive Alive Tour is known for their distracted driving programs. With that in mind, UNITE Corporation recently visited Tri-County Regional Vocation Technical High School with their distracted driving and impaired driving simulator. The program shows participants the dangers of texting while driving and drinking while driving, but in a controlled environment.

Distracted Driving Programs

During this stop on the Arrive Alive Tour, Franklin Matters attended the event and did a story on it. Their reporter spoke with Vincent Polito, a senior in the Engineering program at Tri-County. Polito tried out the drunk driving simulator and was not successful at it. He said, “It felt like I had no control over what I was doing and that there was input delay but with my brain. The good news is, I didn’t kill anyone. Even better news is that it wasn’t real.”

That is key: it wasn’t real. The distracted driving programs are designed to give participants the feel of driving drunk or texting while driving, but not actually do it. They can see the results of them doing it. This hopefully stops them from doing it on the road, if given the opportunity. 

Drunk Driving Facts

To help drive the message home even more, there is an impact video playing during the event. This includes facts on drunk driving and distracted driving. Some of those drinking and driving facts include:

• Nearly one-third of all traffic deaths involve alcohol-impaired drivers.
• Every two minutes, a person is injured in a drunk driving crash.
• On average, two in three people will be involved in a drunk driving crash in their lifetime.
• In 2014, the highest percentage of drunk drivers involved in fatal crashes were in the age range of 21 to 24.
• Every day, people drive drunk more than 300,000 times. However, only about 3,200 of those people are arrested.

Pleased With The Program

The distracted driving programs are brought to communities with the help of schools, organizations and more. The prinicipal at Tri-County Regional was happy to have the Arrive Alive Tour on campus. He said, “We are pleased to have UNITE’s Arrive Alive Tour® program to come to Tri-County in order to educate our students on the impact of distractions like texting while driving as well as driving under the influence of alcohol, which can be detrimental to themselves and others. Engaging students in real-life scenarios teaches them to be alert and better-equipped to handle dangerous situations and behaviors which will be safer for our community.”