"The Standard in Driver Education and Traffic Safety Since 1973"

Thinking Outside the Box It was suggested to me before our annual international convention that one of the things this industry and the people who work in it needed….is more passion. When I got through laughing, I addressed that word and its true meaning, even speaking about it in my annual address to the convention attendees at our closing banquet. Clearly one thing we have never lacked is passion or enthusiasm for what we do. The problem is clearly having the resources and manpower necessary to accomplish everything we want to do. Then there is another thing we must consider. What is our thinking process regarding driver education and what we want to do? We must learn to think "outside the box" of what driver education is and has been to us. I am not talking simply about teen driver education, which is typically done as 30 hours of classroom training and 6 hours of behind the wheel instruction on average. Am I all I can be and is what I offer all that a given student needs? Are there programs I need to create that will benefit more people and more ages beyond the teenage years? These are all important questions and thought processes that we need to get into. We are in a new decade and will soon be in a new century. This moving piece of metal that we travel in to get from point A to point B has come a long way and changed dramatically from its initial creation. Vehicles are safer today and much easier to drive than the metal boxes our forefathers made for us to drive. If vehicles had stayed the same all these years since their creation then we would be a poor society, less technologically advanced than we are and the carnage on our roadways even greater. Driving and driver education needs great changes too! Who says 30 hours of classroom and 6 hours of behind the wheel is the real formula for creating a good driver. Of course we who are in this industry and actually teach these students know that is not correct. I have felt for many years that we need a course with at least 10 hours of driving to actually do everything we need to do in preparing students to drive from the novice stage and that is only the beginning. As to classroom, we need to take a hard look at every theory, maneuver and rule as it is laid out today and see what we have been missing. My point here is that nothing should be sacred and that "the box" which is now driver education in your state or province needs to be redefined and/or adjusted. Let's create programs that meet the needs of our students and not just fit into a mold of what our specific states or provinces require. We can and have always been able to exceed what any given law requires. There are other considerations we must begin to think about as well. The "baby boom" generation that I am a part of, is getting older and very soon people age 55 and older will be the majority of our nations population. Someone, whether driving school owner, driving educator, legislator or constituent has got to make some hard decisions in regard to the aging of this nation and our drivers. Clearly, things change, as we get older. Mentally and physically I know I am much different today than I was ten years ago and that is a process we cannot change. We are living much longer today, due to advances in medical science and people are driving for longer periods of time than ever before. As we get older our reflexes are not the same, our decision making process is not the same and other abilities decrease as well. I am certainly not advocating locking all of us up once we reach a certain age, but doing something that will benefit all of us who utilize our roadways. We must endeavor to have mandatory retesting of driving skills at regular intervals once a person reaches a specific age. There must be mandatory vision tests and possibly physical testing done as well and on an annual basis after a specific age has been reached. States and provinces are far too afraid to do this because of political concerns. I am not advocating automatic removal of drivers licenses at a certain age, but prudent testing that will allow us to be certain that someone is still a competent driver and physically able to do it safely. We must think of all the people on our roadways and not just do what is politically correct. Whatever we do in the year 2000, let us all make sure we think outside the box we have known, create a new direction that is not molded in one way and that it has no limits or boundaries. I wish everyone a great and prosperous year!

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