By Audrey Bailey
The Boys & Girls Club of Zionsville is one of only two clubs in Indiana offering a course to help teens learn how drive safely before they ever get behind the wheel of a car.
The club has partnered with the UPS Foundation to offer the Road Code program, a free, three-hour driving safety course that includes trained instructors, videos and a driving simulator. The next class will be offered Nov. 25 at the club’s east campus, 1575 Mulberry St.
“It’s a wonderful program to not just teach kids how to be a driver, but how to be a safer driver,” said Glenn Sanford, unit director at the Boys & Girls Club of Zionsville-East.
Two driving simulators at the club allow teens to learn the difference between good and bad driving habits in a safe environment.
“There’s an impaired driving program that shows you what it’s like to be under the influence of alcohol and try to operate a motor vehicle,” Sanford said. “There are delayed response times and over-calculation on steering and things like that.”
The UPS Foundation has been working with Boys & Girls Club of America since 2009 to develop the program.
“The UPS Foundation, their experience is more with the technical side of things, where the Boys & Girls Club has the experience with how to best reach young people. So it was a great partnership that way,” Sanford said.
In order for this program to continue being offered, Boys & Girls Club of Zionsville must continue filling classes and fulfilling grant requirements, which has not been a problem so far.
“Currently, we’re still under that test cycle. The first test cycle of it was only three years long, and it was a to see who was able to meet their grant requirements,” Sanford said. “And our club was one of the fortunate ones to not only reach that goal, but to exceed it.”
For more, visit bagcoz.org/events.
