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About the DSA Editor - Eddie Wren

 

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Eddie Wren's background in driving and road safety is extensive. He spent fourteen years in the British police, mostly serving as a traffic patrol officer. 

 

During that time he was trained as a police ‘advanced driver’ and ‘advanced motorcyclist,’ scoring the second highest test marks in the history of the force concerned, for the latter. British police advanced driving courses are widely regarded as the highest level of road-driver training in the world, and can total up to 640 hours to achieve the required standards.

 

As a necessary and frequent part of his duties, he attended and investigated many hundreds of road crashes, ranging from minor to fatal.

 

For the last three years of his police service, Eddie was chosen, on a full-time basis, to visit senior schools, colleges, and apprentice training centres, to discuss safety and survival with groups of young drivers and bikers. He gave several hundred of these talks. 

 

The specialist section to which he belonged was Britain's first such police department and was the forerunner to many excellent schemes, including BikeSafe

 

At the wheel of a VW Phaeton - test drive results here

After leaving the police, he became a ‘Department of Transport Approved Driving Instructor’ and worked for the British School of Motoring. He was swiftly promoted to supervisory instructor. 

 

Because of his students’ high driving-test success rates, Eddie was subsequently invited to become a driving test examiner, but declined the offer.

 

He later became a civilian investigator and handled many road accident cases on behalf of lawyers and insurance companies.

 

He then – by invitation – became the managing director of an advanced driver training company, for which he recruited former police instructors and arranged the training schedules for individuals who wished to learn to drive to the same high standards as do British traffic patrol officers.

 

Eddie Wren was subsequently appointed as the only north of England driver for a branch of the U.K. ‘National Health Service’ that organizes the delivery of donor organs. This necessitated driving at extreme speeds for long distances on public roads, but always with police clearance. In December 1999, he was featured in the UK ‘Volvo Magazine’ regarding his position in charge of training for the team of donor organ transportation drivers in Scotland.

 

He has driven regularly and extensively in the USA over the past four years and has now almost completed the writing of a book on driving in America.

 

The adjacent photograph was taken in June 2003, on an occasion when he was categorically not permitted to 'drive', when -- after many months of applications and planning -- he was allowed to take a navigator's seat during a two-plane low-flying exercise in RAF Hawk jets, through the valleys of the English Lake District and in Scotland -- a truly 'Top Gun' experience with some of the best low flyers in the world. This was one assignment in his role as a freelance writer and photographer for British and American magazines.

 

Eddie Wren is now the executive director of Drive and Stay Alive, Inc. (a not-for-profit organization), and he is also the Vice President, and Director of Policy, for Advanced Drivers of America, Inc.

 

He is available as a speaker -- in the USA or elsewhere -- either on practical driver safety topics, for senior school students, colleges, universities, service organizations and special interest groups, or on the subject of international comparisons in road safety ideas, techniques and results.

 

Under his management, Drive and Stay Alive, Inc., has achieved the following:

  • The first and so-far only North American Organization to be made a signatory of the European Road Safety Charter (though this was for DSA's global contribution to safety, not any Europe-specific aspect);

  • The Best International Traffic Safety Website award of the Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals (CARSP -- June 2004);

  • A national commendation from the Governors' Highway Safety Association (GHSA) in the USA, "for outstanding commitment to international highway safety" (July 2005);

  • Sponsorship for DSA's unique International Road Safety News, from the FIA Foundation (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile), the governing body of world motor sports (July 2005).

You may contact Eddie Wren either via: editor["at" sign]driveandstayalive.com or by using the 'Contact Us' link, below.

 

 

(This page last updated 12 July, 2005)