To help address the risk that young, inexperienced drivers pose, the UPS Foundation has partnered with community youth organisations around the world to deliver its own driver education experience.

UPS Road Code® is a five-hour programme based on the same safety training provided to UPS drivers, with trained UPS employees acting as volunteer instructors. The young drivers participating in the programme receive four sessions of classroom-based instruction. Each of these sessions offers a 75-minute lesson that drills down on safety principles from basic safe driving to the consequences of risky behaviours such as talking on cell phones, texting and drink driving.

Throughout the programme, each participant has the opportunity to apply what he or she has learned by getting behind the wheel of a virtual driving simulator.

UPS Road Code launched in 2009 and expanded internationally in 2011 through partnerships with other organisations interested in providing similar driver education to their youth. European programmes are now operational in Germany through Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe and in the United Kingdom through UK Youth.

More than 250 UPS employees volunteered as instructors in this programme throughout 2014, a year that saw the programme expand to 80 sites around the world. More than 22,000 teenagers and novice drivers have participated in the programme since its inception.