On Thursday, a group of Luella High School underclassmen got positive reinforcement about driving safety from veteran NASCAR driver Jeff Burton. Burton visited the school enroute to the Atlanta Motor Speedway. He will run his #31 AT&T Mobility Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS in hopes of winning Sunday’s Pep Boys Auto 500. “Driving safely is so important, and this is the place where all the young drivers are,” Burton said. “It’s just a great opportunity [to promote safe driving].” Burton, a driver-safety advocate with AT&T, has visited high schools around the country for the past two years, urging students and would-be new drivers of their driving responsibilities. He was at Luella early Thursday afternoon. “Every year, high schools across the county lose students because of car accidents,” Burton said. “It’s really, really important for you guys to understand [driving …], with it comes a huge responsibility.” He told his teenage audience that he experienced the loss of friends, and injuries to family members in preventable automobile accidents. He urged teens to use sound judgment, common sense and adhere to the rules of driving, to avoid fates similar to people he knew. According to the Teen Driving Council, one in three teen drivers has an accident in the first year of receiving a license, and a teenager is injured in a car crash every 55 seconds, and killed every 6.5 minutes. Crashes continue to rank as the top cause of death among children and young adults. “Anytime you have a celebrity push the same message that we try to, it’s important,” added Principal Eckerle. “With Jeff Burton speaking about it, the message becomes even stronger.”(Henry Daily Record)(10-25-2008)
