| As funding for driver education declines according to the National Highway Safety Administration (NHSA) 2013 Traffic Safety Facts, there were 2,345,719 people injured or killed as a result of vehicle crashes. NHTSA reported that there were a total of 118 people killed in 2013 from accidents involving emergency vehicles. The effectiveness of an Emergency Vehicle Operations Course component of visual and perceptual skills can be measured by administering the Driver Performance Test prior to and after student participation. This study examined the population of the students who participated in the TRS 235: Emergency Vehicle Operations Course at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) in a traditional classroom and online delivery formats. This study determined the potential for a participant to be involved in a crash prior to and after completing TRS 235, as well as the effect the course had on the participants' visual and perceptual skills. The results of this study indicated that the online and traditional course delivery formats pre and post-test total scores increased significantly. This study also determined that there was a significant difference between the efficacy of online and traditional delivery with online participants scoring higher than the traditional participants. It is important to note that this study does not examine the actual physical performance of the participants' driving skills or behavior.;Keywords: skill enhancement, driver education, driver control sequence, SIPDE, search, identify, predict, decide, execute, SEE, evaluate, pitch, yaw, roll, oversteer, understeer, traction loss, visual and perceptual skills, driver performance test, traditional vs online delivery methods, traffic safety, emergency vehicle operations, TRS 235. |
