History of Roadrageous™:
The need for a completely different kind of traffic training that concentrated on changing behavior was first conceived by former North Miami Mayor Howard Premer of the American Institute for Public Safety in a conversation with Dr. Ricardo Martinez, then Director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Dr. Martinez felt that aggressive driving was a dangerous and growing problem and suggested that they contact Drs. Leon James and Arnold Nerenberg, who were psychologists that specialized in the psychology of driving, aggressive driving, and road rage and who had recently testified about the subject before congress.
Mr. Premer hired Dr. James and Dr. Nerenberg as well as a third expert in driving behavior, Dr Diane Nahl. He put them together with professional curriculum writers and the result was the original Roadrageous program.
The next step was to get the curriculum approved by the Miami-Dade courts for helping deal with repeat offenders and drivers charged with especially aggressive and dangerous drivers. Before the court would approve the course, they insisted on an independent evaluation by a well known and respected expert, Dr. Frederick A Marsteller. After an extensive evaluation, Dr. Marsteller, gave the course a glowing recommendation, saying "I have concluded that the "Roadrageous" Curriculum is likely to be a useful and effective curriculum for changing driver behavior" and "This is a well-conceived curriculum with a strong potential to have a lasting positive impact on the driving behaviors and attitudes of students"
The course was then installed as the first curriculum in Miami-Dade for the remediation of aggressive driving and has since been approved in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Thousands of students have taken the course and it has been the subject of two effectiveness studies by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which found that the course reduced collisions 64-74%.
Since then two new versions of the course have been created, one to address the needs of Law Enforcement personnel and one focused more specifically on teens and younger drivers. The Law Enforcement version has been used to train police throughout the State of Florida.
Both the Law Enforcement and standard Roadrageous versions have been used in Army bases throughout the country.