Lloydminster Honda finance manager, Becky Bumbacco, is excited for new drivers to test out this weekend’s driver’s ed event at the local Honda dealership. Taylor Weaver Meridian Source
With the goal of promoting road safety in our community, Lloydminster Honda is hosting a drivers ed event with a focus on distracted and impaired driving.
Class is officially in session starting at 4 p.m. tomorrow and will resume from 9 a.m. onwards on Saturday in the Lloyd Honda parking lot.
“It’s called driver’s ed and we’re hosting it right here at the Lloydminster Honda lot, and our focus is on impaired and distracted driving,” said Becky Bumbacco, finance manager, Lloydminster Honda.
“We’re going to have a couple of tracks set up for young drivers or those who recently got their learner’s permit.
“They can come in and get a first-hand experience with the dangers surrounding distracted and impaired driving in hopes of making better choices behind the wheel and hopefully mitigating the life-altering events that can happen in our community.”
Lloyd Honda will have three professional racing instructors on-hand to help drivers navigate the two tracks they’ll have set up in their parking lot. One track will be devoted to distracted driving and the other, to impaired driving.
For the impaired driving portion of the event, Bumbacco explained participants will be using visual devices to simulate the effects of being impaired.
“With the professional racing instructors coming in this weekend, it’ll be very safe and very secure, but, they’ll basically put beer goggles on and drive a car,” she said.
For the distracted driving portion of the event, Bumbacco said she’s under the impression there will be things inside the car to cause unexpected distractions, such as a ringing cellphone or a GPS unit tone.
“The usual things we deal with every day,” she said. “That’s not just young drivers, either, everybody could probably benefit from that, but our target demographic is the younger drivers in the community.”
Bumbacco has reached out to 28 schools within an hour of Lloydminster to let them know about the event as well as set up a booth at the Lloyd Comp’s recent car show.
“I can’t guarantee it’ll be a brand new Honda, but we have lots of vehicles on our lot so we’ll pull a couple out for the day and they’ll be put through the courses,” she said.
Bumbacco gave credit to the community-minded team behind Lloyd Honda’s corporate office for putting on such an event.
“We’re a small community compared to some of the others they operate out of such as Edmonton, Kelowna and Victoria, and they know that in a smaller community, it’s important to have a community focus,” she said.
“We just wanted to do our part. We’re selling cars, and we want to make sure people are operating them safely, especially younger folks who are just learning how to drive, we want to make sure they’re equipped with the knowledge to get themselves home in one piece.”
Driver’s ed is free of charge and will be run on a first-come-first-serve basis, so anyone interested in participating is encouraged to come down to the dealership at their convenience.
“We’ll get them to sign up at the registration table and then work them into the next cycle through the two courses,” said Bumbacco. “All you need to participate is a valid driver’s license.”
There is no end-time for the two days of drivers ed as that will all depend on how many new drivers register.
“We’ll likely be going until 8-9 p.m., especially since we still have daylight that late.”
