After Tim Groover's 15-year-old daughter, Brittany, was killed in a car wreck in 2002, he began talking to teens about the dangers of their inexperience behind the wheel.

But Groover, who lives in Forest, realized that his talks were not making a difference.

Bedford County teens were still dying on the road, and one of the youths he talked to was later killed in a wreck.

"It reinforced to me that it's going to take more than talking," Groover said.

That realization eventually led him and others from Bedford County to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which had been studying teen driving. They were soon joined by Montgomery County officials who were concerned about the same problem.

And after almost a year of planning, VTTI, in a partnership with those two counties, announced Thursday that they are launching a program to better train teen drivers.

They hope the program will be adopted throughout the country.

"It is an area where we can really make a difference," said Charlie Klauer, a senior research associate at VTTI.

Between 1994 and 2006, 80 teen drivers were killed in wrecks in the New River Valley and the Roanoke region, according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Of those, 13 were in Bedford County and 12 in Montgomery County.

VTTI's research has shown that overcorrecting, running off the road and distractions are a few of the most common causes of crashes among teen drivers.

The program that VTTI hopes to put in place in the next two years aims to address those problems by giving teens driving experience on tracks, and by monitoring their driving with in-vehicle devices that provide feedback.

The program also will include a parent-teen contract that puts the responsibility of safe driving on both parents and teens.

A teen driving coalition in Bedford County, BEDCO CARES, has raised at least $50,000 for tracks that it hopes to build on an old landfill near Bell Town Road by next summer, Groover said.

Montgomery County is still narrowing down its options for a few sites, Klauer said.

Sgt. David Marsh of the Bedford County Sheriff's Office was involved in the creation of the driving project and said the experience on the track will teach teen drivers some of the same driving skills that are used to train officers.

"If we can teach police officers how to do it, why can't we teach our kids?" he said.

In-vehicle monitoring devices have been used in other parts of the country, but scientists at Virginia Tech say they have improved the technology so that it can provide real-time feedback to the driver and record video for parents to review.

Each monitor will initially cost $12,000 to $13,000 because of the research and setup involved, Klauer said.

She hopes that VTTI receives enough money from state and federal governments to get 90 monitors, which will be divided between Montgomery and Bedford county schools.

Eventually, VTTI wants the schools to take over the program. They will be able to purchase additional monitors for about $300 each, Klauer said.

Groover has been a leading force behind the project but said that he didn't get involved to bring closure or meaning to his daughter's death.

Even so, he knows she would be proud of what has been accomplished.

"I'd think that today, because of what we've done to try and help kids, she'd be smiling," he said.

Data delivery editor Matt Chittum contributed to this report.