Chick-fil-A Partners With Office of Highway Safety

Chick-fil-A, Inc. starts the second year of its partnership with the Governor's Office of Highway Safety (GOHS) to conduct the Georgia Teen Safe Driving program, a statewide program encouraging teenage drivers to buckle up.

Participating Chick-fil-A® restaurants again will award coupons for free Chick-fil-A® Chicken Sandwiches to student drivers found to be wearing seatbelts at "safe-driving'' checkpoints set up by local law enforcement officers at high schools throughout Georgia.

Chick-fil-A restaurants will distribute more than 50,000 free Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich coupons during the 2001 - 2002 school year. Working with various local law enforcement authorities, Chick-fil-A and the Governor's Office of Highway Safety have set a goal of having safe-driving checkpoints at every high school in Georgia.

"Not only do we promote safe driving, but we also promote goodwill among the community's youth and local law-enforcement agencies,'' said Truett Cathy, Chick-fil-A founder and CEO. "We've received tremendous feedback from the communities where this program has been initially implemented.''

According to Yvonne McBride, director, Governor's Office of Highway Safety, "Educating teen drivers is an absolute priority. The ultimate goal of this program is to promote the use of seatbelts by teen drivers in an effort to prevent unnecessary motor vehicle injuries and fatalities.''

Starting three years ago, Chick-fil-A conducted a safe-driving pilot program on a local level with Gwinnett County that was initiated through a partnership with the Duluth Police Department. The Duluth pilot program's success gave rise to the statewide initiative.

"The program has been very successful in strengthening relationships between youth and local police,'' said Dr. Ted Neuman, principal of Duluth High School in Gwinnett County, which piloted the program three years ago. "I am sure the program will continue to be a success on a statewide basis.''

Statistics indicate car accidents are the number one cause of death among teenagers. The risk of crash involvement per mile driven among teens is four times the risk among adults.