WILMINGTON, N.C. — It’s never a bad idea to brush up on the rules of the road. One Wilmington driver’s education teacher is making sure people have access to do just that and for good reason.

Joe Fitzgerald spent 11 years working in law enforcement and reconstructing crashes. He says it’s one of the most difficult jobs he’s ever had to do.

Joe Fitzgerald started the nonprofit National Crash Prevention Program. (Spectrum News 1/Natalie Mooney)

“This assignment came along with another task that I consider the most difficult,” Fitzgerald said. “And that is having to tell families that someone they love and care about isn’t coming home anymore.”

It’s that job that made him make it his mission to work to prevent those crashes and start his nonprofit, the National Crash Prevention Program.

A sample question in the defensive driving course. (Spectrum News 1/Natalie Mooney)

“Every month, we have these keynote presentations that are designed to not only be informative but to be inspiring and uplifting,” Fitzgerald said. “And our goal is to get it to as many individuals and conferences and get that message out to as many people as we can.”

Now, he’s offering online defensive driving classes. These classes help fund these presentations, which are done at no cost to the organizations he presents to.  

NCDOT Crash Facts says in 2020, 1,658 people were killed on North Carolina roads in traffic accidents.

“These presentations might be to a high school. It might be to a conference somewhere. We spend, again, a lot of times with the Marines at Camp Lejeune and Camp Johnson,” Fitzgerald said. “Because for U.S. Marines, one of the No. 1 mishap killers of U.S. Marines is motor vehicle crashes.”

Joe Fitzgerald shows one of the videos available in the defensive driving course. (Spectrum News 1/Natalie Mooney)

It’s a simple concept. After enrolling in the course you can watch videos that teach you the lesson as if you were there in person, then you take a test, and if you get all the questions right you can move onto the next section and repeat until the course is complete.

Fitzgerald hopes that with this course and his presentations with the NCPP, he can help change peoples’ lives for the better.

“I have witnessed the destruction that traffic crashes can cause in a family. I’ve even experienced it in my own life,” Fitzgerald said. “And my hope is that giving these presentations and these online defensive driving classes ultimately keep our roads safer and keep families from experiencing great tragedy, and that’s our overall goal.”

You can sign up for Fitzgerald’s online defensive driving course here.

The course is also available in Spanish.