For the second year in a row, the Delaware County Juvenile Court has been awarded a grant from the Ohio Department of Public Safety to send dozens of teens to an advanced teen driver program.

Delaware County Juvenile and Probate Court Judge David A. Hejmanowski said the court was awarded a $10,000 grant earlier this year and will send 45 juveniles involved in traffic court due to a citation to Better Ohio Teen Drivers, a training program that aims to prepare teen drivers for several emergency driving maneuvers.

Hejmanowski said crashes are the number one cause of death for driving-age teenagers, and teen drivers are “a perfect storm of bad outcomes.” He elaborated that there are three key factors: many teens are inexperienced drivers; teens “are not always making the best or safest choices;” and the fact that parents often give teenagers “the beater” or cars that are older and do not have up-to-date safety features.

Hejmanowski said in the 25 years he has worked at the juvenile court, there has been only one year where a teen was not killed in a crash in the county. He added juvenile traffic offenses are steadily returning to pre-pandemic levels, and when teens come into juvenile court for a traffic citation, they are ordered to complete a driver safety program. Hejmanowski said he’d like to work preventatively to reduce teen crashes.

“What is most likely to help, what we’d love to see from an educational standpoint is a more practical skills-based education prior to people getting their license,” Hejmanowski said. The State of Ohio requires 24 hours of classroom or online instruction, eight hours of behind-the-wheel training, and 50 hours in-car with a parent. “(Teens learn) the rules of the road, not what are the kinds of things (they’re) going to face.”

Hejmanowski said the training program the 45 teens will get sent to will teach them how better to handle emergency situations by putting them behind the wheel and teaching them to how react.

Mark Bloom, president and founder of Better Ohio Teen Drivers, said a recent study was conducted by OhioHealth that compared teen drivers with and without advanced driver training (ADT) and their ability to pass four drills: a slalom course; braking and steering on wet pavement; an emergency lane change; and regaining control in a skid. The study found that 64% of teens in the control group passed the drills compared to 75% in the trained group.

Three to six months after the drills, the teens were retested and 69% of the control group teens passed, while 86% of the trained students passed.

“Our training delivers a lifetime of driving skills,” Bloom said. “The body cannot go where the mind has not been.”

Bloom said the training gives teens a safe place to “purge their first wide-eyed moment” and replace it with training.

“(It’s about) panic input versus a trained reaction,” Bloom said. “(After the program) if you see this situation in real life, you won’t go to panic, you’ll go to training.”

The Delaware County Juvenile Court received a $20,000 grant last year, and Hejmanowski said he was able to send 89 teens to the training. Since then, he’s heard firsthand how the training has helped teen drivers navigate a dangerous scenario.

“(They said) training kicked in,” Hejmanowski said. “We’ve got a very practical sense of what that training does. Those practical skills you learn by doing. We practice everything else we do to get good at it and then we take a 16-year-old who may not have the best skills at long-term planning and stick them behind the wheel of a rocket going 80 miles per hour, and we’re surprised when we get bad results. (Now we have a) scientific study that shows us that the kids who go through the program are better drivers, have fewer contacts (with the judicial system) down the road, and are better able to handle those situations.”

Hejmanowski said he hopes to be able to offer the program to more teens in the future.

“I will continue to be looking for other ways to make this kind of training available to folks who otherwise would not have it available to them,” Hejmanowski said.

Bloom said there are only five driving schools providing this type of training in Ohio, and he hopes that more emphasis on this training in the future will bring more driving schools to the state.

“If you build it, they will come,” Bloom said.

More information about Better Ohio Teen Drivers can be found at betterohioteendrivers.org.

Glenn Battishill can be reached at 740-413-0903.