Project+Description


 * Here is the letter that Ms. Echols and Ms. Djupman "received". You should use this to start conducting background researching and setting up your website. For additional information about the requirements for each component of the project, follow this link to the Scenario Outlines.**

October 27, 2009

Dear SLA Students:

Teenagers are the single most at-risk population of drivers, causing the highest percentage of automobile-related accidents. Motor vehicle crashes are the single highest cause of teenage fatalities and 16-year-olds have higher crash rates than drivers of any other age. Some of this is due to behavior such as speeding up to keep with traffic and accelerating when a light turns yellow.

As a result, teenage drivers face exorbitant insurance costs. Although proof of insurance is necessary to obtain a driver’s license, many drivers (teenagers especially) choose to circumvent this requirement by driving uninsured. The consequences of uninsured drivers are dramatic: according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the economic impact of drivers aged 15-20 is $40 billion. AAA reports 15-17 year olds as responsible for $34 billion worth of crash costs.

State Farm Insurance Company is working in connection with the School District of Philadelphia to remedy some of these issues. We have recognized that there are two primary issues at stake:

1) Understanding of safe driving practices: due to the optional nature of Driver’s Education prior to obtaining a license, many drivers are either unfamiliar with common-sense rules of driving and the underlying physical principals.

2) Ability to pay: many families simple cannot afford the sky-high prices of teenage driver insurance, and therefore allow teenagers to drive illegally.

We are proposing a remedy to both of these issues that will replace our current “Good Student Discount” and the graduated license process (which has shown to be somewhat successful). Rather than tying insurance discounts to grades, we are asking that students demonstrate a familiarity with the common-sense rules of driving and the fundamental rationale behind them, based on the principals of motion expressed by the kinematic equations and measurement techniques related to displacement, velocity, and acceleration. In order to be eligible for this discount, students must create an informational website that provides the common-sense rules of the road as well as an analysis of the motion of a car using graphs, equation, motion maps, and written expression. You should also include data from personal experience, such as the length of traffic lights, times of high traffic, timing of lights, and construction zones. The required scenarios, based on a survey of the most frequent incidence of traffic accidents and driver needs, include:

1) Stop light violations 2) Collisions due to heavy traffic 3) Reckless dumping of items from overpasses 4) Reckless speeding 5) Head on collisions due to distracted drivers

Each scenario should be a separate page on the website. As individuals from the target population, we are also looking for suggestions for ways to address issue of dangerous driving on a broader scale. This should be an additional but separate page.

If you have any questions during the course of this project, you can email them to sla.driversed@gmail.com. We will answer any relevant questions as quickly as possible and communicate them with your teachers so that they are aware of the work you are doing.