Lt. Gov. Promotes Safe Teen Driving - Talks About Troubled Driving Past

After being pulled over twice for extreme speeding, South Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor is telling teenagers—don’t repeat his reckless mistakes.

He’s promoting a new program on teen driving.

The program is called PUT ON THE BRAKES. The free classes are on Saturday July 25th at the BMW performance center in Greer.
(call 704-732-8950 or go to http://www.putonthebrakes.com)

Bauer says he got involved in promoting this after meeting the father of two teen victims who wanted to do this program.

But you may remember—Bauer himself has had two high profile run-in’s with the law while driving.

In December of 2006—troopers say Bauer was travelling around 78 miles per hour in Laurens County—-no ticket was written.

Then a few months later, he was seen doing more than a hundred miles per hour in Chester County.

In that stop—the trooper pulls alongside Bauer on the shoulder—asks who he is—then lets him go.

We wanted to know if Bauer was the right person to speak on this issue.

NewsChannel 7’s Jonathan Carlson asked Bauer, “With you’re driving past—are you the right person to be advocating for this publicly?“

He replied: “Sure I am—because we all make mistakes—so hopefully other peoples lives will be saved because of this—and you go back and say hey—wish we could change some of the things we’ve done. Fortunately I haven’t paid the ultimate price.“

Teen driving is such a vital safety issue.

Car crashes are the leading cause of death for teens.

NewsChannel 7 found, 16-year-olds are -3- times more likely to die in a car crash.

And here are the major factors in crashes involving teens, according to “teen driving dot-com”:
   
The number one factor is speed.

That’s followed by ignoring the right-of-way.

Tailgating.

Improper passing and driving left of center.

Fatigue

And reckless driving.

Tom Crabtree contributed to this report.