Free driving lessons for teenagers happening this weekend in Windsor

The Ford Driving Skills for Life program set up a course in Tecumseh, Ont. on September 24, 2022 to show young drivers the dangers of distracted driving. (Sanjay Maru/CTV News Windsor)

The Ford Driving Skills for Life event returns to the WFCU Centre this weekend.

During the three-hour, in-car lesson, new drivers will experience and learn from four different scenarios:

• Emergency lane changes
• Over-steering
• Distracted driving
• Impaired driving

“Young drivers have a higher probability of being in an automobile accident,” Dave Grimmie program manager in Canada told CTV News in an interview Thursday. “And that is because of inexperience and poor decision-making.”

Grimmie says their instructors are in the vehicle with the driver, on a closed course at low speeds. Windsor police will also be on hand.

They use ‘fatal vision goggles’ to help teenagers learn what it’s like to be behind the wheel after consuming alcohol or drugs.

“What’s great about these goggles is (they) impair your physical motor skills but it doesn’t impair logic,” Grimmie says.

Instructors will also allow teenagers to have a cellphone in their hand and ask them to send a text message while driving at a low rate of speed, on a closed course with no other vehicles around.

“And what happens is they run over cones, they drive a little bit erratically,” Grimmie says. “It just really reinforces that you can’t drive either in a distracted or an impaired state.”

There are two sessions (7:30 a.m. 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.) on Saturday Aug. 24 and Sunday Aug. 25.

Registration is required.

The program is a partnership between the Ford Motor Company and the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF).