April 29--By the time they wrap up their drivers' education classes, teenagers are well-versed in a long list of safe driving dos and don'ts: Wear a seat belt. Get enough sleep. Never text and drive.
But what many young drivers aren't aware of are the vision impediments truck drivers' face on the road.
The Geneva and Joliet offices of ProDrivers plan to change that by hosting the company's first "Teens and Trucks" event in the Chicago area. The program May 12 and 13 will feature professional semitractor-trailer drivers at Willowbrook and Addison Trail high schools in DuPage County.
They will deliver a 45-minute classroom safety demonstration, followed by an outdoor demonstration in which high schoolers can sit in the seat of a truck parked between two cars.
The goal of the outdoor demonstration is to show young drivers the several blind spots truck drivers' deal with when merging on the highway, as well as the amount of distance required to stop such a heavy vehicle.
Rob Schader, the department chair of physical education and health at Addison Trail High School, said he immediately agreed to have the school host the workshop when ProDrivers reached out to him.
"They called me out of nowhere, and I thought this was a great program for our kids, on something that we don't teach a whole lot," he said.
"We try to give kids every possible thing that they need to know when they're driving."
Up to 75 percent of all truck-involved fatalities are unintentionally initiated by car drivers, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Additionally, 16-year-olds are more likely to be involved in single-vehicle crashes, be responsible for a crash, be cited for speeding and have more passengers than older drivers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Jim Smith, director of safety at ProDrivers, said the Atlanta-based company created the Teens and Trucks program in 2010, since the company's CEO knew a young woman killed in a car accident with a large truck.
The company, which helps find jobs for truck drivers across the nation, has since visited 20 schools across the country, including ones in Phoenix, St. Louis, Nashville, Orlando and Forth Worth. The company budgets about $10,000 per quarter to cover the travel expenses of the program and the cost of free T-shirts for students, which read "Teens and Trucks: Share the Road" and "No txtN yl drivN."
Smith said students rarely have the chance to sit in a truck drivers' seat and understand its difficulties. While truck drivers are usually professionals skilled at operating 80,000-pound vehicles, trucks are frequently cut-off by cars, leaving drivers just five seconds to slow their heavy vehicles down.
ProDrivers is among the largest transportation companies in the U.S., with 42 locations. Stacy Susner, operations manager for the Geneva and Joliet offices, said the company thinks of itself as an agent for truck drivers. ProDrivers has access to listings of trucking jobs in multiple locations across the country, and so they try to best match a driver with a client based on the type of job, the hours and the pay.
"We try to make sure they get a paycheck each week," she said. "And then, if they want to leave their job at some point, they don't have to start at square one and send their resume out to 50 different places. We do that for them."
ProDrivers has operated in the Chicago area for 10 years, working from a location in Bolingbrook before moving to Joliet three years ago, she said. The Geneva office opened last year.
Smith and other ProDrivers officials hope the Teens and Trucks event in May will lead to several others in the Chicago area over the years.
"I've been in the safety business for almost 20 years, and this is the most gratifying thing we've done," Smith said. "I think our industry gets a bad rap. We do our best to promote our industry, but the main goal is to save these kids' lives."
meltagouri@tribune.com
