MILTON, Wis. – Some of the safest new drivers on Wisconsin’s roads just might come from Rock County.
For the second time since launching Work Zone Safe Wisconsin last spring, the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association (WTBA) awarded a Milton High School student with one of its monthly scholarship checks.
Sophomore Aron Nuredini received his $500 prize during a brief ceremony outside the high school Thursday afternoon. The event also marked the one-year anniversary of the program’s statewide launch and coincides with National Work Zone Awareness Week.
Nuredini, 15, recently completed the innovative online program during the classroom portion of his driver’s education class taught by an early program adopter Steve Steinke.
“This has been really important in humanizing the people that are working behind the barrels in construction zones,” Steinke said. “Every session now I have kids, like Aron, who take that course, work their way through it, and I always reiterate at the end you can get something out of this besides a $500 check. You get that knowledge of what you’re doing, that it’s important everyone gets home.”
WTBA developed the free course in early 2024 to better protect its members who build and maintain Wisconsin’s roads. Data out this week from WisDOT shows 10 people, including two construction workers, died in work zone crashes last year.
Work Zone Safe teaches teens what they’ll encounter in work zones through personalized stories, articles, and videos of men and women in Wisconsin who have been impacted by crashes.
More than 2,000 people have successfully completed the course, which students can take anywhere they have internet access. The course helps driver’s education programs meet a new state law requiring at least 30 minutes of work zone-specific education for all students.
“Learning their stories, learning the rules of the road really help us hopefully educate our next generation of drivers to get into those safe practices, have their eyes up, phones down, move over, slow down,” WTBA Executive Director Steve Baas said.
“We’re hoping that over time that number builds and that also builds the safety of our roadways and our work zones.”
Every month, WTBA and its partners award a teen driver who finished the program with a $500 scholarship check, sponsored exclusively by the Wisconsin County Highway Association. Other winners have come from Brookfield, Fish Creek, New London, Platteville, Reedsburg, Rhinelander, Verona, and West Allis.
You can find the course by going to https://workzonesafe.com/ and clicking on the Wisconsin Work Zone Safe link.
