Most Pennsylvania teenagers -- at least those who want reduced car insurance premiums -- receive the minimum of 30 hours of classroom instruction and six hours on the road with a certified driving instructor before they test for their driver's licenses.

That's because parents aren't always truthful when they attest that their son or daughter spent a total of 50 hours on the road. Theoretically, any extra instruction teens receive can only help since traffic accidents are the No. 1 cause of death among young people 16 to 19 years old.

A subsidiary of a Florida company that manufactures simulators for military training is prepared to fill the driving education void with a stimulated course that teaches teens rules of the road and safe driving techniques and lets them practice the skills on a virtual highway.

The simulator allows teens literally to sit in the driver's seat. Instead of a windshield, the driver looks at a trifold of flat-panel computer screens that provide lessons and views of the road once the simulated course begins. The driver training system is called StreetReady and is marketed by Virtual Driver Interactive, a Sacramento, Calif.-based subsidiary of the Raydon Corp. of Daytona Beach, Fla.

Representatives from the company were among vendors yesterday at the 92nd annual meeting of the Association of School Business Officials International at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown.

Before December, the driver education simulators were only in school districts in a half-dozen Florida counties. That's when Raydon Corp. formed Virtual Driver Interactive to market the system to a wider audience, particularly school districts, said Van Flanigan, general manager of the company's education division.

The company provides the system to schools in exchange for licensing fees per student that range from about $70 to $100, Ms. Flanigan said. The company provides technical support and computer software upgrades as part of the leasing arrangement, she said.

Marketing to school districts is a different animal than marketing in the corporate world because school districts don't have just one person vested with the decision to obtain the product. Instead, Ms. Flanigan and her colleagues have to convince several levels of decision-makers, from school finance officers to school board members, of the value of the simulated driving system, she said.

The simulated system consists of a dozen, 20-minute courses and takes a minimum of four hours to complete. But young drivers can spend as long as 24 hours on the course, said Ms. Flanigan, who is based in the company's regional office in Atlanta.

A participant must score at least 70 percent on each section of the course to move on, but instructors can require the percentage to be higher if the prospective driver is deficient in a particular area, said Beckie Hocker, a company representative from Portland, Ore.

In addition, parents can obtain printouts of the lesson results so they can work with the teenager on driving techniques, she said.

More than 5,600 teenagers died in traffic accidents in 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

Though traffic accidents remain the No. 1 cause of death for teenagers, the numbers of deaths in traffic accidents have dropped considerably in the past 30 years, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. There were more than 9,000 annual teen traffic fatalities in the late 1970s, a figure that has dropped more than 35 percent.

Studies have attributed the drop in teen traffic fatalities to changes since the mid-1990s in state laws for teen driver licensing that provide for a graduated method of full licensure.

Under Pennsylvania's graduated licensing system, a teen cannot take a driver's test without first having a permit for six months and at least 50 hours behind the wheel. Still, the young driver can't drive after 11 p.m. until he or she is 18.

The simulated system is one component of successful driver training for teenagers that should also include classroom instruction, parental involvement, computer-based training and actual behind-the-wheel driving, Ms. Hocker said.

Even with simulated driving as an added weapon in the teen driver education arsenal, two studies since 1999 have shown that driver education for teenagers actually increases the number of crashes because it encourages the most accident-prone teens -- those 16 and 17 -- to obtain licenses, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.