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Community Corner

Teens Take the Wheel at Safe Driving Summit

New drivers learned more about New Jersey's Graduated Driver's Licenses program during the program at Rutgers.

Princeton teens were among more than 100 people from across the state who gathered at Busch Campus Student Center at Rutgers University earlier this month to participate in the first New Jersey Teen Safe Driving Summit designed to help teens and their parents learn about the state's Graduated Driver's License program.  

Teens from local Students Against Destructive Decisions chapters offered "teen only" and "parent only" workshops.

Parents, teachers and school officials from 15 different counties also participated in workshops to help better understand the risks for teen drivers and how the GDL can help reduce those risks. 

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Keynote speaker Cara Filler, an internationally recognized speaker, talked candidly about the tragic death of her identical twin sister, Marin, who died in a motor vehicle crash just one day after the girls' celebrated their 18th birthday.  

Filler asked the audience to close their eyes and imagine the most important person in their life and then imagine what their life would be without them. Then as they were thinking about that person, the audience members listened to a video, a traffic safety commercial from Canada in which a teenage girl holds the hand of another girl who was fatally injured in a car crash.

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Dr. Jim McCall of Rowan University handed out lists of of 25 unsafe driving activities and asked participants to find which of their peers could sign their name to the list. 

The summit also included raffles for tickets to Great Adventure and gift certificates for gas, Amazon, Best Buy and others. Attendees were invited to participate in social networking and to try out a behind-the-wheel driver simulator in the parking lot of the campus.   

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