AAA Foundation Safety Videos: Coming Soon to a DMV Near You

Psychologists talk of the “teachable moment,” a time at which a person is ready to accept instruction. Some AAA Clubs have started programs to teach drivers about safety at an unusual but appropriate time: standing in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. “I saw an article in the Hotsheet that AAA Niagara-Orleans had developed a program where they had continuous tapes running at the DMV,” says Julie English, Traffic Safety Programs Coordinator for AAA Minneapolis. (Marion Bicker, CEO of the AAA Niagara-Orleans Club, had provided three combination TV/VCR machines to her local DMVs and provided endless-loop tapes of AAA Foundation safety videos.)

“We have a license bureau right in our headquarters office,” English says. “There are times when those lines are long and the wait is even longer. So I thought this would be a good way to calm everybody down, give them something to do, and sneak in traffic safety messages at the same time.” English is just getting started on setting up the equipment, she says. “It won’t be used every day, just on peak days. Though that could change. We’ve often joked about showing movies in Licensing but it never occurred to us to do something like this. We appreciate someone coming up with the idea.”