Submitted Photo The North Dakota Highway Patrol walks a teenager through a field sobriety test at the Vision Zero Driving Skills for Success event. The teen is wearing alcohol impairment goggles, which simulate various blood alcohol content levels. Photo from Lauren Wahlman.

More than 50 young drivers, ages 14-18, learned valuable road safety lessons through hands-on experiences at a Vision Zero Driving Skills for Success event in the Minot State University Dome Wednesday. The event included more than 16 interactive stations.

“I always say driving is the most dangerous thing you’ll do every single day for the rest of your life,” said Ryan Gellner, Vision Zero outreach coordinator with the North Dakota Association of Counties (NDACo).

“We’re either showing you or you’re physically doing something in a controlled environment so you get to experience what these things are like,” Gellner said.

At one station, called “The Seat Belt Convincer,” participants seated themselves in a car-like device, fastened their seatbelts and were launched downward at an angle before a locking mechanism suddenly engaged, simulating the impact of a minor car accident driving at only 5 mph.

Once the locking mechanism was engaged, the seat belt tightened dramatically and passengers were jolted back into their seats. The goal of the lesson was to show teens even small impact car accidents at low speeds can be jarring and possibly painful to the driver.

“We have to know how to drive safely so we don’t get into accidents. We’re dealing with real human lives. … It’s not a game,” said Isabella “Izzy” Lockrem, a 14-year-old attending the Driving Skills for Success event. Lockrem obtained her North Dakota learner’s permit last September.

Lockrem was one of the many teens waiting in line to try the driving course outside. The driving course was a closed, controlled course simulating the dangers of texting while driving.

During the course, the teens would have the opportunity to get behind the wheel of a car with an officer seated next to them.

For their first lap they would simply drive through the course, maneuvering turns and avoiding cones. The real challenge was on the second lap, when the teens would have cell phones buzzing with texts from the event volunteers nearby, which they were then asked to respond to while driving.

“We are encouraging the teenagers to text during this course to show them how hard it is and how dangerous it is, because they’ll hit cones and run over cones and, thankfully, in this controlled environment it’s only cones, whereas in the real world those cones could be people or other objects they’re running over,” Gellner said.

Additional exhibit topics included maneuvering through construction zones, how to change a tire (including a demo and a hands-on skills test), how to fill fluids in a car, checking mirrors for blind spots and how to parallel park. Other exhibits covered more serious topics such as drinking and driving or driving under the influence of drugs.

“This is the Simulated Impaired Driving Experience. It looks like a normal go-kart but with the flip of a switch we can ‘impair’ the kart so it will not react the way you want it to react. So when you turn it might be delayed, and when you break it might be delayed,” Gellner said.

“While we don’t want anybody to drive impaired, we do have opportunities for teens to understand how dangerous and how out of control things can get really fast,” he said. “We can really prove to them how things can be bad, but we let them go through it in a safe environment, where we can step in to help correct and educate.”

Lockrem said the Simulated Impaired Driving Experience was one of her favorite stations because of the hands-on experience and impact it had on her. She said seeing the North Dakota Highway Patrol’s demonstration of the rolling car with the unbuckled crash dummies also was impactful.

“I haven’t done the driving portion of my driver’s ed yet. That’ll be later this summer, but I feel like this experience is a lot more hands-on here. I got to actually get behind the wheel of a couple things and sit up in the big vehicles like semis and plows,” she said.

Lockrem also was given the opportunity to practice backing into a parking spot in a truck with a hitched trailer. The station was hosted by U-Haul and also included a Safe Trailering Demonstrator, a steering and simulation device showcasing the importance of loading a trailer with 60% of the weight toward the front of the trailer and 40% toward the back.

Lockrem is aiming to get her license this September and afterward hopes to take a course to get her motorcycle license. She said she used to ride with her dad on his motorcycle often when she was younger and would like to be able to ride safely in the future by herself or with her friends.

Lockrem said a valuable piece of advice she received regarding helmets from the All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) station was, “The human body is meant to protect the brain up until about your running speed because that’s as fast as we were naturally meant to go, speedwise. And the instructor was saying how when you get on an ATV or in a car, you’re accelerating your body way past what the human body is technically designed for.”

“Humans are very resilient but at the same time we’re also fragile,” she said.

The North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT) reported in 2022 that teen drivers accounted for 6% of all licensed drivers but were behind the wheel in nearly 16% of all crashes. Teen drivers in North Dakota were involved in 11% of fatal crashes for the same period.

According to the NDDOT, because of these statistics, it is important to continually educate teen drivers and provide them with opportunities to enhance their driving skills to move toward the goal of Vision Zero: eliminating fatalities and serious injuries on North Dakota roadways.

“If we can get every driver to understand it is their personal decisions that will ultimately decide if they have a safe drive or an unsafe drive, then we’ll all be better off because of it. That’s what I hope Vision Zero shows new drivers,” Gellner said.