Keep an eye out for the Peers Foundation Driving Simulator in an area near you.
Check out the article on Engadget.com
Click to read the Full Press Release
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Reality Check is a fast-paced trivia program that gives students a chance to show off their knowledge in an elimination-style program. Questions involve some current events, pop culture, and random facts, as well as a strong emphasis relating to drug and alcohol awareness. This program makes a real lasting impression on students; through interactive play, team building, competition, and sheer fun, we bring a memorable, healthy learning experience while being excitingly entertaining.
This program includes:
- Local media and news stations will be informed about the event
- Full student participation, up to two hour program
- Cash prizes
- Preliminary and exit questionnaires
- High-energy, professional program host (age-appropriate)
- Professional producer and camera operators
- Professional light and sound
- Two (2) large screen projectors
“Errors of Alcohol Abuse” obstacle course and/or a graphic documentary on drunk driving
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The AT&T #itcanwait campaign with the AwareTXT driving simulator made a stop at the National Corvette Museum and the people who got to try out the simulator loved it. See what their staff had to say:
Michael,
We had such a great time at the Celebrate My Drive event on Saturday! The team from PEERS was awesome! They called me the night before to let me know they were here, and it alleviated a lot of stress knowing they didn’t get lost! They arrived on time the next morning ready to go. As you can see in the picture they took every care with our 2005 Silver Corvette Coupe, but it was an amazing sight to see teens step into the driver seat confident individuals, and step out naming all the infractions they had made when simply glancing back and forth from their cell phones. So many parents picked up our Driving Contracts that day after seeing how hard it was to follow the laws of the road while being such a distracted driver. I know I enjoyed watching the light bulb click on for many teens, and I look forward to working with PEERS in the future and seeing the impact they have on others.
Thank you,
Meghan Stidham
Education Coordinator
National Corvette Museum
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AT&T in conjunction with their #ItCanWait campaign held an event for developers to come together and work on new applications to help prevent texting and driving. The writer Jared Morgan covered the event for the Santa Monica Patch.
Brief excerpt of the article is below for the full article check it out here on the Santa Monica Batch.
The campaign is called “It Can Wait” and it’s AT&T’s effort to keep motorists off of their cell phones while driving.
The telecommunications company hosted a hackathon on Friday and Saturday, bringing together professional software developers, amateur hackers, graphic artists and all-around techies at office-share CoLoft in Santa Monica to compete for a chance to win up to $20,000.
“The focus here is to encourage developers to come up with a solution that can help reduce and or eliminate texting while driving,” said Alex Donn, senior marketing manager of the AT&T developer program….
Follow @ATTdeveloper and watch #ATTHack and #ItCanWait on Twitter for more information.
Credit:
In this video: Watch interviews with Geoff Hollingworth, head of innovation at Ericsson; Alex Donn, senior marketing manager of the AT&T developer program; Tim Anglade, head of developer programs and evangelism at Apigee; and developers Grigor Karavardanyan, Dubem Enyekwe andMaxwell Cabral.
]]>The full article is located below:
Students learn texting and driving isn’t easy
The crash had a distinct sound, like scraping metal, screeching tires and breaking glass. It repeated, over and over, as student after student settled into the driver’s seat only to climb back out minutes later after they had run off the road, hit a car or ran into a pedestrian crossing the street.
Fortunately, this wasn’t driver’s ed.
North Hardin High School hosted a texting and driving simulator from AT&T on Wednesday to highlight to some of its seniors how dangerous sending a message can be while maneuvering a car.
The simulator is part of the company’s “It Can Wait” campaign, which intends to raise awareness of the dangers of texting while driving. Sept. 19 is planned to be a national day of action for the campaign.
The company is taking simulators around the country to reach teenage drivers, the targeted audience for the campaign, said Hank Mangeot, an AT&T regional manager. The company contacted Hardin County Schools about bringing one to the county.
“We’re working communities large and small,” Mangeot said.
Teens fill out a pre-survey to determine their feelings about texting and driving, and then get into a car and put on goggles that allowed them to see a virtual road complete with other drivers and pedestrians, said Paulos Frezghi, one of the simulator operators. Students are given a message to text while trying to navigate the course. They complete another survey after driving in the simulator.
Mangeot said he thinks students leave with a better understanding of what can happen when they text and drive, from their own mistakes to not being able to react to the other drivers and pedestrians.
“They get out and are like, ‘Wow, I had no idea,’” he said.
The simulator doesn’t shy away from showing the effects of the errors, from the drivers’ own deadly crashes to the damage they can cause to others.
Seniors Eric Callens and Scott Sterusky both eventually crashed while driving the simulator.
“It just makes a big ol’ crash and that means you died,” Sterusky said of the simulator.
Both agreed it was very difficult to drive the car while trying to complete the messages they were supposed to send.
Senior Kierra Priest ran into a pedestrian during her turn in the driver’s seat.
“I didn’t crash,” she said to the crowd of students, who were enthusiastically shouting out directions before her accident, “I just killed somebody.”
Priest said the simulator was different than she expected, but she thought she had been doing well until the virtual pedestrian crossed her path.
“It wasn’t hard, per se, until the person popped up,” she said. She considered the experience some more.
“I guess it was kind of hard,” she added.
Kelly Cantrall can be reached at (270) 505-1747 or [email protected].
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]]>8/25/2012 9:00:00 AM
Did They Get The Message?
A simulated scenario allowed juniors and seniors at a local high school to see how dangerous it is to text while driving.
Trimble County High School hosted a distracted driving assembly Friday where state and community leaders warned teens of the dangers when texting or using a cell phone while driving. Presenters also told teens of the consequences of texting and driving – from debilitating injuries to possible jail time.
State Representative Rick Rand presented statistics to the students about the dangers of texting and driving. Drivers who text are 23 times more likely to be involved in an accident, he said.
“The leading cause of death for young people is an automobile accident,” Rand said.
Kentucky legislators addressed the issue by passing laws that took effect in January 2011 allowing fines to be issued if a driver is caught by law enforcement texting while driving. Legislators also passed measures restricting teens under the age of 18 from talking on a cell phone while driving a vehicle.
“Texting and driving is a serious problem,” Rand said.
A car traveling 55 mph can travel an entire length of a football field in five seconds, Kentucky State Police trooper Brad Arterburn said during the presentation. Five seconds is the average amount of time a driver takes their eyes off of the road to read a text, he said.
Arterburn also related other instances where texting and driving led to accidents that caused life-long injuries or scarring from burns received in accidents.
One Kentucky resident faces two years in jail after a conviction of texting while driving. The 17-year-old driver caused a head-on collision that resulted in a fatality because of sending text messages while behind the wheel, he said.
Vicky Rand of Rand Insurance also encouraged students under the age of 16 to ask drivers they are riding with to use safe practices when driving as well and discourage cell phone use.
Juniors and seniors were able to participate in a virtual driving experience through a safe driving program presented by AT&T in the high school’s parking lot after the assembly. The activity allowed students to see how taking a driver’s attention away from the road for just a few seconds could cause injury to others or to themselves because of an accident.
A full news release it below:
Americans Urged to Make Lifelong Commitment on Sept. 19
Dallas, Texas, August 15, 2012
Wireless provider AT&T*, seeking to bring attention to a serious road-safety problem, today urged all Americans to pledge to stop texting while driving, and then to join with others Sept. 19 to make a lifelong commitment to never do so again.
AT&T, its employees and other supporters are calling on all drivers to go to www.itcanwait.com to take the no-texting-and-driving pledge, and then share their promise with others via Twitter (#itcanwait) and Facebook. The pledge effort is part of the company’s public awareness campaign aimed directly at stopping the dangerous practice of texting while driving.
More than 100,000 times each year, an automobile crashes and people are injured or die while a driver was texting and driving, said AT&T Chairman & CEO Randall Stephenson, citing a statistic from the National Safety Council1.
“Our goal is to save lives,” Stephenson said. “I hear from far too many people whose lives have been forever changed by a texting-while-driving accident, and together, we want to spread the word about how deadly a single text can be. Texting and driving should be as unacceptable as drinking and driving. (See video)
“We’re challenging everyone to take the pledge to never text and drive and to make it a lifelong commitment,” he said. “And we’re challenging all device makers and app developers to offer devices that come pre-loaded with a no-text-and-drive technology solution.”
AT&T’s “It Can Wait” public awareness campaign is focused on a simple, powerful message: No text is worth dying for. AT&T plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on the campaign in 2012 and has made it an ongoing commitment in future years. The effort is comprised of several key initiatives, including:
- Encouraging its 240,000 employees to take the pledge and, in turn, urge all people to commit that they will never text and drive. On an average day, AT&T retail store and call center employees speak to customers more than 500,000 times.
- Working with TV and music celebrities to deliver a strong no-texting-while-driving message via TV ads, concerts, public appearances, Twitter and Facebook.
- Launching an aggressive social media campaign with advertising on Facebook and Twitter to encourage Americans to take the pledge and to share their pledges with their friends via social media.
- Educating the public using TV ads on the dangers of texting while driving that will run during high-profile events and teen-focused programs.
- Working to provide a toolkit of no-texting-while-driving information to every high school in the country.
- Challenging device makers and app developers to work with AT&T so that all devices include a pre-loaded, no-text-and-drive technology solution as soon as possible.
- Launching an online driving simulator at www.itcanwait.com in the coming weeks – so that anyone with access to the Internet can experience the dangers of texting while driving.
- Bringing an in-car simulator to more than 200 locations before the end of this year.
- Enlisting others – including law enforcement, educators, national retailers, consumer safety groups, legislators and the entire wireless industry – to join the no-text-and-drive movement.
- Asking more than 1,000 of AT&T’s strategic and other major suppliers to encourage their employees to pledge not to text and drive.
“Distracted driving is an epidemic on our roadways, and we need people all across America to take action in their communities to help put a stop to it,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. “I applaud AT&T for taking on this issue with the ‘It Can Wait’ campaign, and I thank them for helping to spread the word that no text or email is worth the risk.”
“Working with teens day-in and day-out, we see firsthand the impacts that peer pressure – and peer influence – have on the decisions they make,” said Sandra Spavone, executive director of the National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS). “That’s what makes AT&T’s efforts so effective. They understand that – by working with these teens and incorporating their feedback programmatically – ultimately, we’ll reach even more of that critical and impressionable audience with a message they’ll hear.”
Together with NOYS, AT&T has pioneered more than 12 teen-led, teen-focused educational summits, with plans to hold 10 or more locally by the end of the year. NOYS is a collaboration of national, youth-serving organizations, including non-profit organizations – such as Students
Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) and Mothers Against Drunk Driving – and government agencies, such as the Governor’s Highway Safety Administration (GHSA). AT&T shares in their common goal of promoting safe and healthy behaviors among our nation’s youth.
In addition, many other governmental, corporate, non-profit and other organizations have already pledged support for the awareness campaign, including: The AFL-CIO’s Union Plus program, American Federation of Teachers, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, CTIA, Junior Achievement, LULAC, National Education Association, National Safety Council, National Urban League and RadioShack. More supporters can be found at www.itcanwait.
A recent AT&T survey2 found that 97 percent of teens say they know that texting is dangerous. The survey also found:
- 75 percent of teens surveyed say that texting while driving is “common” among their friends;
- Almost all teens (89 percent) expect a reply to a text or email within five minutes or less;
- And 77 percent of teens report seeing their parents text while driving.
But technology can help: 89 percent of teens said a phone app to prevent texting & driving – likeAT&T DriveModeTM 3 – would be an effective way to get them or their friends to stop texting and driving.
AT&T first began its “It Can Wait” campaign discouraging texting and driving in 2009. The websitewww.itcanwait.com provides an opportunity to take the don’t text and drive pledge. It
also offers a host of educational resources and information on the issue – including a documentary featuring families impacted by texting and driving accidents that has been viewed more than 3 million times.
1 National Safety Council www.nsc.org
2 Survey conducted by Beck Research on behalf of AT&Thttp://www.att.com/Common/about_us/txting_driving/att_teen_survey_executive.pdf.
3 Data and text messaging charges may apply for download and app usage. Standard messaging rates apply to auto-reply messages. AT&T DriveMode is free to AT&T customers only. Compatible device required.
*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.
About AT&T
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a premier communications holding company and one of the most honored companies in the world. Its subsidiaries and affiliates – AT&T operating companies – are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation’s largest 4G network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet, voice and cloud-based services. A leader in mobile Internet, AT&T also offers the best wireless coverage worldwide of any U.S. carrier, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries. It also offers advanced TV services under the AT&T U-verse® and AT&T | DIRECTV brands. The company’s suite of IP-based business communications services is one of the most advanced in the world.Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com. This AT&T news release and other announcements are available athttp://www.att.com/newsroom and as part of an RSS feed at www.att.com/rss. Or follow our news on Twitter at@ATT.
© 2012 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. 4G not available everywhere. AT&T, the AT&T logo and all other marks contained herein are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies.
The PEERS Foundation and AT&T have agreed to partner for the AwareTXT Driving Simulator Tour. AT&T will be traveling around the United States with the PEERS simulator to events reaching everyone from young children in schools to adults at conferences. PEERS Foundation is very excited about this partnership and the awareness AT&T can bring to the dangers of driving while texting. According to Distraction.gov, 3092 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver and an estimated additional 416,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving a distracted driver in 2010. Keep an eye out for the AwareTXT Driving Simulator at an event in your city soon.
]]>Remember, don’t drive distracted, put down the phone and keep both hands on the wheel.
View more videos at: http://nbcwashington.com.
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