On the Road, the Sense of Defense
Nick LaMorte and Clay Colefield want to keep union members safe and whole. They’ve got them driving defensively.
By Jon Melegrito
Nick LaMorte, president of CSEA’s Long Island region, came up with the idea while attending church. He learned that his deacon, who’s concerned about saving souls, was teaching a defensive driving course in the church basement for a fee of $40. Confident that his union could do as well, LaMorte started his own program in a union hall and offered it to his 3,000 members — at half the price.
The union is not into saving souls, of course, but it’s definitely into saving lives. “That’s why we offer all kinds of programs to our workers,” LaMorte explains. “Not just the usual workers’ stuff like grievance handling. Something the whole family can also benefit from.”
According to the National Safety Council, 77 percent of accidents result from driver errors. “That concerns me,” says LaMorte, 49. “I want this course to heighten our members’ awareness about their driving attitude and the effect it has on the way they handle themselves behind the wheel. It’s important for us to have the most safety-conscious drivers on the road.”
LaMorte, who has been president since 1993, notes that many of CSEA’s members perform stressful and dangerous jobs: like plowing snow during heavy blizzards, checking and replacing electric cables during a storm or teaching school. “When you drive home from work, you’re so stressed out. And that’s when you get into accidents.” A defensive driving course (DDC), he reasoned, is one way to avert them.
He bounced the idea off Clay Colefield, a member of CSEA’s education committee. Colefield liked it. So the two men hatched a plan that has since become the most popular training course among CSEA members.
TRAIN THE TRAINER. To make it affordable, CSEA set up its own instruction program to be taught by one of its members. Prodded by LaMorte, Colefield took time off from his regular job at the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to attend a week-long “train the trainer” school in New York City. After being certified as a trainer in defensive driving, he went into gear and, as he puts it, “took my show on the road.”
Since then, Colefield, 53, has taught more than 1,300 members and their families, spending two nights a week at different sites across the region. The work is completely voluntary on his part: CSEA pays for no more than his dinner and mileage. “I’d only be watching TV at home if I weren’t doing this,” he reasons. “Besides, it’s a great service to our members. For the amount of dues they pay, the union should do a lot for them.”
“It’s also a good diversion from what I do during the day,” Colefield adds. He’s a senior fish and wildlife technician employed by the state to enforce regulations governing waterfronts in the area.
FAMILIES, TOO. The six-hour program, conducted in two three-hour sessions, is open to all CSEA members and their families for $20 and to non-members for $5 more. The fee covers instruction materials and a Depart-ment of Motor Vehicles certificate. Conducted mainly in classrooms with films and lectures, the course focuses on safety rules, driving laws, alcohol abuse and safe driving techniques. Students who pass a final test receive a certificate good for three years.
Most participants take the course to get their auto liability insurance reduced (10 percent per year for three years), and up to four points taken off their driver’s record.
“For $20, you save $200 a year in car insurance, money you could put in your pocket,” Colefield explains. “If you live in Brooklyn, it could save you as much as $4,000.”
Jennifer Nagy, 39, a secretary, took the course last summer mainly for that reason. ”I already got 10 percent knocked off my insurance, so I expect to save $580 since my DDC certificate is good for three years.”
Steve Abramson, president of CSEA’s Long Beach unit, says there are also benefits for an entire community: “If you have, say, 80 people in a village who have taken the course, insurance rates for the entire village will also go down.” Of 300 members in his unit, 215 are graduates.
Ann Marie Sarlo, 45, a guidance counselor, also likes the reduction in insurance rates. But what appealed to her the most is knowing more about drunk driving. “I have two teenagers and I’m glad they both want to take the class,” Sarlo says. “DWI was emphasized a lot as the number one cause of accidents.”
DWI’S TOLL. Colefield always makes the point that about 16,000 people die each year from drunk driving. “We typically think of the person slurring words or staggering out of a bar as the drunk driver,” he points out. “A can of beer can just as easily affect your reflexes and impair your judgment.”
As for aggressive drivers, “steer clear of them,” Colefield counsels. “If they do something ridiculous, ignore them. If you try to get even, you will only aggravate a situation. It’ll be gone in two seconds.”
A poll conducted recently by the American Automobile Association found that the biggest threat to highway safety is aggressive driving. The association concludes: “Too often, when people get into their cars, they put the transmission in drive and put their brains in park. Losing our tempers behind the wheel is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.”
DRIVE NOW, TALK LATER. Driving while distracted is very dangerous, Colefield notes. “About 450 to 1,000 die in vehicular accidents each year because they don’t concentrate.” Among the most common mistakes: tuning the radio, eating, turning around to reach for something, reading, polishing fingernails or putting on lipstick, and — the contemporary scourge — talking on a cell phone. Recently, Suffolk County banned hand-held phones in cars. That decision stemmed from a 1999 accident in which all the passengers died after a motorist using a cell phone rear-ended their car.
Colefield reels off more helpful suggestions: When you’re sleepy, get off the road. Change lanes properly by using both rear-view mirrors. Know what all signs mean. Use signals when you turn. In case of an accident: “First find out if you’re OK, then make sure your car is safe and out of the way so it’s not impeding traffic flow; check if others involved are injured. The last thing you do is exchange information with the other driver; but don’t scream at each other.”
Sheryl Jenks, a CSEA member for eight years, has been driving since she was 17. What she learned from the course, she says, is common sense. “You realize that you can be right — but dead right. You can have the right of way and still be killed in an accident.”
LaMorte is proud of CSEA’s record of offering education and training programs to its members — “the best of all the unions affiliated with the New York Federation of Labor,” he says. For his deeds, his deacon will no doubt say that Nick LaMorte is a good soul who simply wants to keep his union members safe and whole.
