Here’s a 3-minute video for driver education professionals. Below the video is a long-form blog that explores the Don’t Drive Like This! project.
Increase engagement and retention. And save lives!
You need tools that spark thinking, conversation, and change. Especially around aggressive, distracted, and impaired driving! Don’t Drive Like This! is a visual, story-rich, humor-forward program that amplifies the great teaching you already do by supporting different learning styles. The content is based on story-based illustration, humor, and conversation and writing prompts. It easily integrates into what you already do.
What it does for Driver Education Professionals. And students.
Don’t Drive Like This! is paperbacks and poster visuals built to support engagement and retention in three risk areas: aggression, distraction, and impairment, with content designed for both classroom facilitation and at‑home discussion. It’s not a driver manual. Rather, it’s a scaffold for engagement that plugs into your existing curriculum to make safety concepts stick.
The four-part framework
Each of the more than 45 sections tackles a specific dangerous situations that our main characters Ashford and Ashley cause (hence our tagline Don’t Drive Like and Ash!).
The materials use a tight, repeatable learning arc that invites students to think, discuss, and write. And engage with each other, you, and parents supporting lesson retention because they place themselves in the illustrations.
You help students engage through a humorous title, relax with a short limerick, then dive into a detailed story-based illustration. They pull their own meaning through targeted writing and discussion prompts. The result is lively, reflective conversation that lets learners surface root causes and consequences, without preaching.
Why driver education pros should use it
This is a new part of your toolkit, not a turnkey curriculum. It’s built to magnify your facilitation skills while centering the highest-risk behaviors teens and adults actually face. Hundreds of prompts help shy students write before speaking, give natural leaders structured ways to guide peers, and extend learning into parent–student conversations at home. The visual, conversational, and humorous approach helps typical ability, mixed-ability and non-traditional learners engage and retain these essential lessons.
Pedagogy that sticks
At the 2025 ADTSEA national conference in Montana, I heard repeatedly that engagement and retention were front and center. This project aligns with this using humor, dense visuals, and conversational work that turns passive content into active storytelling and problem-solving.
The materials are purpose-built to support multiple learning styles: verbal, visual, and interpersonal so more students connect with the message and remember it when it counts. By asking students to narrate what they see, defend their interpretations, and relate scenes to lived experience, you’re building the kind of retrieval and transfer that worksheets and tests rarely reach.
Story-rich visuals that surface root causes
Instead of telling students what to think, each packed illustration invites them to spot cues such as stressors, social pressures, anonymity effects, and environmental triggers and construct the causal chain themselves. The “you tell the story” approach nudges honest reflection on how aggression escalates, why distraction feels “normal,” and how impairment ripples into harm, costs, and community impact. It’s a safe way to discuss risky decisions because the characters carry the heat, while students carry the insight back into their own choices.
What’s inside the materials
- 43+ sections focused on real-world scenarios spanning aggression (merging, tailgating, lane jockeying), distraction (notifications, passengers, cognitive load), and impairment (substances, drowsiness).
- 19 Sections on the root causes of aggressive driving and how to avoid it in yourself and deal with it when others exhibit it.
- Funny, memorable limericks that lower tension and open the door to hard conversations without minimizing consequences.
- Story-packed line drawings that reward close reading and collaborative analysis in pairs or groups.
- Prompts you can use in minutes in small-group discussions, reflective writing assignments, and at-home conversations with peers, parents, and other adults.
Where it fits in your program
Use a section as a daily opener, a station in a project-based learning cycle, or a full-class seminar with writing and debate. Each piece is modular and facilitator-friendly. The visuals and prompts cover risk recognition, hazard anticipation, and safe responses without adding much “textbook assignment” overhead. Whether you teach in-class, remediation, or parent nights, the same pages flex for your audience and timebox.
Alignment with professional priorities
Conversations about aggressive, distracted, drowsy, and impaired driving gain power when students do the cognitive lifting. This is exactly the gap these materials fill. The program’s mix of humor and rigor complements traditional imperative, emotional, and consequence-based messaging by adding a narrative, student-led mode that many learners prefer. That blend helps you meet students where they are without sacrificing standards or seriousness.
A note on culture change
The site highlights sobering trends in road rage, distraction, and their human and financial costs. This provides reminders that skill alone isn’t enough: mindset and habits matter.
Anchoring discussions in scenes students can decode together fosters empathy, patience, and social norms that travel from classroom to car and community. When learners see themselves in the story—and see a better way—they’re more likely to practice safer, kinder driving.
An important report, the GOVERNOR’S SPECIAL TASK FORCE ON
HIGHWAY SAFETY was released in my home state of New Hampshire. I encourage you to have a look at it here.
Get involved
If you’re ready to try a classroom set or pilot a few lessons, start with the paperback and pair it with poster art for high-impact, repeatable touchpoints around your room. Explore the blog for facilitation ideas and tips for blending visuals with your current lessons and assessments. Or write for our blog!
Then bring your own voice and instructional expertise to the stories to shape safer, kinder drivers in your community.
For more information on the paperback, posters, and more, see www.dontdrivelikethis.com. Feel free to pass this link along to your instructional leadership at your private driving school, public school program, or statewide driver education or safety coordinator.
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