|
| |
Short Bio
Eddie Wren
ADA's
President and Chief Instructor
Go
back to the Website Contents page
Eddie Wren has an
in-depth and extensive background in traffic safety and driver training.
His relevant career started back in the early 1970s when he joined the police in
his native England, where it very swiftly became obvious to him that the biggest
opportunity to help protect other people would lie in the traffic patrol
department (now more commonly known as the roads policing department). In
1977, his bid to join that specialist department was successful.
His intermediate
("Standard") and Advanced Driver Training for both cars and motorcycles took a
total of ten weeks
– 400 hours
– full-time
training which is the normal duration for obtaining both of these
qualifications. In his Advanced Motorcycle qualification, he scored the
second-highest marks ever.
|
During his police
"traffic" years, Wren specialized in two particular things:
>> Motorcycle patrol
in England's "Lake District National Park" which, despite its modest size (864
square miles) attracts over 13 million visitors per year, almost all of whom
come by car or by motorbike. The mass of vehicles on this beautiful
region's narrow, curvy and mountainous roads mean that whenever a bad incident
occurs, such as a road accident, the roads quickly snarl-up with bad traffic
jams and the only emergency vehicles that can get through quickly are the police
motorcycles.
>> Working for three
years on the Cumbria Constabulary Motorcycle Squad, the eight officers of which
worked full-time on high-school, college and youth-group visits, working with
young people –
rather than simply talking at young people
– with the
aim of reducing young-driver and young-motorcyclist deaths throughout the
3,000 square-mile county of Cumbria (in which the Lake District National Park is
situated).
|
 |
|
The southern end of one of
Eddie Wren's former motorcycle beats, at Ullswater, where tourist
traffic could make the roads astonishingly busy. Photo courtesy and
copyright of John Sandell, 2002 . |
Naturally, he was
also heavily involved with regular roads policing, in particular with the M6
Motorway (equivalent to a US Interstate) and the A66 trans-Pennine trunk road,
where winter blizzards and snow drifts could both be atrocious.
Throughout this
period, Wren attended and investigated many hundreds of road traffic accidents
(nowadays more properly known as "collisions", not "accidents"), ranging in
severity from "damage only" to "multiple-fatality".
During these years,
he was a keen mountaineer, completed his "Mountain Leadership Certificate"
training and was a member of two Lakeland mountain rescue teams. He was also a
RLSS Life Saving Instructor.
|
By this
stage, Wren was also a well-qualified photographer so when he eventually
left the police he set up in business as a professional photographer and
also a driving instructor. Within weeks, the British School of
Motoring [BSM] asked him to be their supervisory instructor for Cumbria
and North Lancashire, which he did. At that time, BSM had about
4400 training cars, nationwide.
Because of
his police and crash investigations background and his photographic
skills, Wren was also swiftly head-hunted by lawyers and insurance
companies who needed crash and crime-scene investigations to be done, so
there was no escape from the old job, either!
He was
subsequently invited to be the managing director of a British advanced
driver training company.
Wren's move
to the USA was a progressive event, lasting from the year 2000 through
2003, and in 2003 he married an American lady.
In 2003, Wren
also founded the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization "Drive and Stay
Alive" [DSA] which works to spread news and information about latest
global research and global best practices in safety for young drivers,
not only throughout the USA but also worldwide.
In 2005, he
was invited to become the Vice President (Policy) and Chief Instructor
of Advanced Drivers of America [ADA], and in 2006 became the President.
He now speaks at
major, international traffic safety conferences, and is a consultant on fleet
safety and driver training in general. |
 |
|
Eddie Wren
Copyright, 2010. All rights reserved. |
In January 2011, Wren
was invited to stand for election as Chair of the "Driver Behavior, Education
and Training Committee" of the International Road Federation [IRF] Road Safety
Working Group, Washington, D.C., and was both honored and privileged to take
that position.
His full
and very extensive
traffic safety résumé/CV (pdf) may be viewed here.
He may be contacted via
e.wren@advanceddrivers.com
.
|
