South Florida Sun-Sentinel
By MIKE ROTHMAN, Forum Publishing Group
October 14, 2009
After more than 15 years without a driver's education program, Santaluces High School, 6880 Lawrence Road, will have a state-of-the-art class, thanks to donations from the Dori Slosberg Foundation.
The organization, which brings in $12 million to $14 million each year, has helped schools in more than 60 counties in Florida bring driver's programs to their students.
The foundation donated 40 remote controls for the Road Wise Digital Classroom for students to use during the class. The percentage of students getting questions correct will help instructors to know when it is time to move on to the next section.
Former state Rep. Irv Slosberg started the foundation after his daughter, Dori, died in a car accident in 1996 because she did not have her seat belt on at the time.
"Why is driver's education so important?" he said during the program's ribbon-cutting ceremony Oct. 5. "What good is an education if your kids are dead? It happened to me. This is so it doesn't happen to any other mother, father or family."
With the new program at the Lantana high school, more than 120 students have signed up to take the class.
Allstate Insurance agent Cathy Peduto said that, unfortunately, car accidents are the No. 1 cause of deaths among teens in the United States.
She said that safe teen drivers start in the classroom and at home with parents, so that they don't end up in fatal accidents.
"Our goal is to change states and reduce the number of deaths," she said.
The Dori Slosberg Foundation also partners with agencies like the law office of Gordon and Doner in West Palm Beach.
Dan Williams, an attorney for Gordon and Doner, said that he would like the program to focus on new technologies that might lead to accidents.
"We didn't have cell phones when I was growing up," he said. "I probably would not be talking to you today if we had texting back then."
Williams alluded to the fact that cell phones and texting have increased the number of accidents among teens in the past 10 years. Texting forces teens to take their eyes off the road while driving.
The funding that the foundation receives to help out schools comes from traffic tickets issued by officers in Florida. The money from the tickets gets siphoned down from the local clerk of courts all the way down to local schools.
In 2002, the bill was passed that gave the foundation $3 per ticket and it was raised to $5 in 2005.
Slosberg said 30 percent of that funding goes toward behind-the-wheel training.
Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Capt. Patrick Kenny summed up the need for the program, saying as a parent he feels safer knowing these programs are taking place in the high schools.
"I don't want to get a knock on my door in the middle of the night," he said.
For information, call Tara Kirschner, executive director of the Dori Solsberg Foundation, at 561-488-7900.
Copyright © 2009, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
