Advent eLearning will soon release new courses to expand its catalog of behavioral driving education, including courses for Defensive Driving and Misdemeanor Traffic.
Based on Advent eLearning’s successful Traffic Safety behavioral driving instruction, the Defensive Driving course will be an expanded version of Traffic Safety to include more accident avoidance scenarios. The Misdemeanor Traffic program will combine behavioral driving instruction with anti-social intervention programming to address vehicular misdemeanors beyond vehicle code enforcement.
Advent eLearning Traffic Safety Program
Developed in conjunction with our clients, the Advent eLearning Traffic Safety program has been used by prosecutors across the country for nearly a decade in citation diversion, deferral and reduction programs. In states like KY, NY, IN and LA, prosecutors depend on Advent eLearning to provide an end-to-end, online solution for high volume citation processing, including marketing, document management, eligibility review, online education, fee disbursement, and case filing and adjudication.
These programs allow prosecutors to improve the road safety of their communities while providing a source of revenue to help fund prosecution operations and other critical community organizations. So not only do these programs make the roads safer, but they also make the entire community safer by funding prosecutors, victim advocates, and others in the criminal justice system—without further burdening taxpayers.
Without the efficiency of the Advent eLearning Traffic Safety solution, most prosecutors would find operating a traffic diversion program too resource-intensive to justify, with time and personnel normally dedicated to criminal prosecution spent mailing letters, taking applications, chasing down citations and forms, trying to get “traffic school” certificates, collecting fees, sending fees to clerks, etc. So the integrated Advent eLearning process allows prosecutors to operate their citation diversion programs without the overhead of these manual processes.
Behavioral Driving Instruction
Key to the success of Advent eLearning’s Traffic Safety programs has been the use of behavioral driving instruction methodology. Developed by Gold Cross Safety Corporation, the Traffic Safety course is a succinct one-hour program that focuses on aggressive driving behavior such as speeding, tailgating, traffic control device violations, lane-space violations, and distracted driving.
According to Evans (2004), driving instruction can be distinguished between driver performance and driver behavior. Driver performance training teaches drivers what they CAN do, while behavioral training teaches what a driver DOES do. Driver performance relates to the driver's knowledge, skill, perceptual and cognitive abilities, while driver behavior is what the driver chooses to do with these attributes.
That means that Advent eLearning Traffic Safety program teaches drivers beyond what they may have learned in drivers’ education or in a typical “traffic school” curriculum. The course is not just a rehash of the rote learning of a state drivers’ manual. Rather, the methodology provides for scenario-based training of real-life examples of accident causation and avoidance strategies.
So while rote performance training—like what signs mean or who goes first at an intersection—is likely appropriate for new drivers (when combined with hands-on practice), an adult driver benefits most from behavioral training of what they SHOULD do given different driving scenarios. This is particularly true in sanctioning environments (like a prosecutor or court program) where the goal is to change defendant behavior towards safer streets.
Gold Cross Safety Corporation is a leading provider of fleet driving training services, serving over 200 of the Fortune 1000 companies in the U.S. In it’s 25 year history, Gold Cross has successfully trained over 2.5 million adult drivers in its behavioral driving strategies.
New Programs
Coming soon, Advent eLearning will release a new 2-hour Defensive Driving course that expands the Gold Cross behavioral driving curriculum. In addition to the one hour of aggressive and distracted driving instruction, the Defensive Driving course will include:
How driver attitudes influence their susceptibility to collisions
Behavioral strategies for avoiding collisions with bicyclists and pedestrians
Behavioral strategies for inclement driving scenarios such as rain and fog
Behavioral strategies for parking, backing and avoiding road hazards.
This new program can be used by prosecutors in their Advent eLearning Traffic Safety programs or can be used by prosecutors or traffic courts in other diversion or alternate sentencing scenarios in typical vehicular enforcement cases.
Additionally, Advent eLearning is developing a full four-hour Traffic Misdemeanor course that prosecutors and courts can use for misdemeanor traffic cases, such as excessive speeding, reckless driving, driving on suspended licenses, driving without insurance, etc. In addition to the Defensive Driving curriculum, this misdemeanor course will include Advent eLearning’s Corrective Thinking evidence-based programming for changing anti-social thoughts and behaviors based on principles of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (cognitive restructuring).
All Advent eLearning education is available to offenders using most any Internet-enabled device, so there is no overhead involved with complex classroom scheduling or cumbersome physical workbook distribution. The courses also allow for Internet browser language translation and closed-captioned video to accommodate education in most any language, as well as compatibility with assistive technology for hearing and sight-impaired users.
Finally, Advent eLearning courses can be delivered to offenders under either an offender-paid model where offenders pay online for their courses, or under an agency-paid model where course costs are invoiced if agencies have grant or other funding sources available. These models can also be utilized together, requiring most offenders to pay for their courses themselves, but invoicing agencies in juvenile or indigent cases. The eLearning platform also includes robust tools for reporting and data extraction so that agency users can measure success metrics of the program including participation, completion and recidivism.
Learn More
If you’re a prosecutor interested in learning more about Advent eLearning’s fully integrated Traffic Safety solution, or just interested in learning more about Advent eLearning’s suite of behavioral driving training for your prosecution or court program, please contact us at info@adventfs.com to arrange a full demonstration of the Advent eLearning platform and training content review.
Evans, Leonard. Traffic Safety. Bloomfield Hills, MI; Science Serving Society; 2004.