RYAN BLACKBURN — In less than a year, Deborah Kinnard's two teenage sons will be climbing behind the wheel, so Kinnard wants to bone up so she can become the most effective driving teacher she can be.
She started with a Parents Reducing Injury and Driver Error class, sanctioned by the Georgia Traffic Injury Prevention Institute.

"It was a good refresher," Kinnard said. "It made me more aware of what I need to do or not do, and the ways I can help or encourage (my kids) in constructive ways. There was just a lot of good tips for parents to help them constructively with their driving skills."

The next PRIDE class will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Watkinsville Community Center.
About 70 counties in Georgia, including Clarke, Madison and Oconee, have instructors who are certified to teach PRIDE, a program developed in 2003 - the same year that 16-year-old Joshua Brown died after his pickup hydroplaned and hit a tree.

Joshua's father, Alan Brown, had said his son never took driver's education and didn't know what to do when he lost control of his truck.

Joshua's death sparked a campaign to teach teen drivers techniques for safer driving and led to several reforms, including Joshua's Law, which required teens to have more experience on the road before getting a license.

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The roads traveled least are the nation’s deadliest roads, according to federal highway data. More Americans die on rural highways than on urban streets and freeways.

Last year, 56 percent of the nation’s 37,261 traffic fatalities occurred in rural areas. Yet rural America has just 23 percent of the nation’s population. In some states, more than 90 percent of highway deaths occur on rural roads.

The grim statistics provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also show that drivers on rural roads die at a rate 2.5 times higher per mile traveled than on urban highways. Urban drivers travel twice as many miles but suffer close to half the fatal accidents.

This may seem counterintuitive, but highway safety officials and activists have plenty of explanations. People driving rural roads tend to drive faster. They drive without seat belts at higher rates. More of them drive and die drunk. When they’re injured in accidents, they may not get timely emergency medical care given the remoteness of many rural roads. And, deer, elk, moose and other wild animals are more likely to dart out into traffic on rural roads.

Some experts note that the outdated design and layout of many rural highways are also factors. Driving errors that are manageable on urban roads become deadly on rural highways.

Victor Mendez, administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, notes that there is little room to recover if a driver makes a mistake on a rural highway.

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