The final open enrollment night for the Calvert County Traffic Safety Council’s innovative Southern Maryland DriveCam program is Thursday, Nov. 13 from 4 to 8 p.m. at Huntingtown High School.

DriveCam is a program where parents and teens enroll to have a camera installed in the car driven by teens that senses significant G-force shifts – panic braking, sharp swerving, and/or rapid acceleration. The onboard camera records up to 20 seconds of each incident, including eight seconds of activity leading up to the G-force shift. That event is then uploaded to the DriveCam Web site for later review by parents.

Calvert Traffic Safety Council coordinator, Debbie Jennings, told TheBAYNET.com that these recordings are available any time to parents to be used to monitor the habits of their new drivers. “They can use the video to train their teens how to act in emergencies or for learning what their teens are doing and to teach better driving habits which may save their lives,” said Jennings.

She went on to say that DriveCam will work with parents that are not comfortable with using the Internet or who are not computer savvy. “DriveCam just helped one Calvert parent create her first email account ever,” said Jennings.

Even though the last open enrollment is Thursday, Jennings stated that parents and teens may register at the Calvert Traffic Safety Offices, located at 210 Main Street in Prince Frederick any day. “All they have to do is to call and setup an appointment,” said Jennings. The council’s phone number is (410) 535-2200.

Here’s how the DriveCam system works according to Debbie Jennings: The DriveCam program uses an in-car video system that is always on, but is only activated to the save mode when a teen’s vehicle hard brakes, swerves or accelerates excessively. Teens get immediate, in-car feedback via a flickering LED light that their driving triggered the “save” mode on the equipment, and will know that their driving will be reviewed by parents to determine if it could be considered inappropriate or unsafe.

The unit saves about 20 seconds of video for each event, which includes the previous eight seconds held in memory before the event occurred.  DriveCam will then upload all saved events that occurred,  by satellite later that evening, assign risk points and add coaching comments, and then notify parents a day or so later by email to review their teen’s saved video at their convenience.

Typically, parents only have to commit a few minutes a week to reviewing any saved events.  Parents that have participating teens can use the DriveCam tool for educational purposes during the learner’s period or early licensure, or to help prevent repeated poor decision making behind the wheel, especially hard braking, rapid acceleration, hard swerving or cornering.

Jennings reports that currently there are 62 teens enrolled in Calvert, about 40 in St. Mary’s and only about 33 in Charles County. “The number is growing, but that is the number right now,” said Jennings.