New York Name Change

Traffic Safety Consultants, Inc., (TSC) is providing official notification to our affiliates (delivery agencies) that we are, as the sponsoring agency of your New York State Department of Motor Vehicles-approved Accident Prevention Course and for the programs that we offer at the corporate level in New York, now operating under the name "www.LowCostAccidentPrevention.com."

From this point forward, "www.LowCostAccidentPrevention.com" will appear (along with "Traffic Safety Consultants, Inc.") as the sponsoring agency on all of your paperwork, including receipts, student workbooks, classroom postings, attendance credit slips, and advertising.

We have updated TSC's ASAP™ Web service that you use to manage your classes and generate classroom materials to reflect this change. Be sure that you use these new materials, and note your sponsoring agency as "www.LowCostAccidentPrevention.com," from now on.

If you have any questions about this notice, please contact Donna (via email or by calling 800 . 252 . 9951).

Sizzlin' Summer Sales Competition

Traffic Safety Consultants, Inc., (TSC) is excited to announce its first affiliate contest, affording you the opportunity to earn over $350 in prizes!

All established California affiliates will have the chance to participate in an eight-week competition that will award four valuable cash prizes for being one of the most improved affiliates.

The goal is simple: Increase your number of paid registrations and the percentage of students purchasing Completion Trackers during the competition period (vs. similar statistics from the previous month). The two affiliates with the greatest improvement in each of these two categories will win the prizes.

Marketing Tips

At TSC, we want to help you to boost your sales and realize your business goals. We, therefore, offer the following suggestions that have proven effective for our corporate-level traffic schools:

• Direct Phone Registrations: When students call for information, be sure to capture those registrations immediately by signing them up for a course while you have them on the phone. (You can do this even for Internet-based students, rather than letting them register themselves later—if they ever return to your site.) We have found that this simple tactic can lift registration rates by roughly 15%.
• Offer the Completion Tracker During Registration: Upsell the Completion Tracker while you have the student on the phone. We have found that doing so boosts sales of the Completion Tracker service by approximately 20%. 

Contest Details

• The competition will run for two months, from July 1 through August 31, 2013.
• Orders generated during the competition period will be compared against similar statistics from the period of June 1 through June 30, 2013.
• First- and second prizes will be awarded to the affiliates with…
• the largest percentage increase in paid registrations of traffic violator school (TVS) students.
• the largest percentage increase in the rate of TVS students who purchase a Completion Tracker with their tuition.
• The winners of the contest will be contacted by Chris Kalili in September 2013, and checks will be issued to them, by TSC, for the amount of the prizes.
• This contest is open to established California affiliates (those on the DMV's OLSIS list of approved TVS course providers as of April 1, 2013) of TSC.
• Participation in the contest is optional, however all eligible affiliates are automatically enrolled.

Best of luck, and have fun!

New Virginia Laws for 2013

The latest legislative session produced statutory revisions that provide for enhanced penalties for drivers who send or read text-based messages while operating a motor vehicle. Texting while driving is one of the most important safety issues currently facing regulators, traffic safety experts, and drivers themselves, and it's unsurprising to see revisions of this nature as awareness about the issue grows. Indeed, a recent study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that truckers who text message while driving are 23 times more likely to crash or to get into a near-wreck than undistracted drivers!

Virginia law already makes it illegal for anyone to operate a motor vehicle while using a handheld personal communications device to send or read a text message or e-mail. Exceptions are made for the operators of emergency vehicles, for the reporting of an emergency, if the vehicle is lawfully parked or stopped, and for navigation or digital dispatch systems.

Under the new regulations, texting is now a primary enforcement violation (rather than secondary), meaning that a driver may be stopped for this offense alone. And the penalties have been expanded:  A first offense is punishable by a fine of $125 (up from $20), and second or subsequent offenses are punishable by a fine of $250 (up from $50). Further, drivers who are convicted of reckless driving face a mandatory minimum $500 fine if they were texting at the time of the offense. These changes take effect July 1, 2013.

This information has already been updated in the curriculum materials for your Internet-based program, and no action is required on your part. Of course, enhanced penalties aside, we encourage you to stress to students that—for the sake of their safety and the safety of others with whom they share the road—they should never text or engage in other distracting activities while they are driving.