Why simulators? Because they work!

The VDI Street Ready Driving Simulator

Every form of transportation training is done with simulators, from Spacecraft to Submarines, why?
Because it's safe, cost effective and it works.

If a 20 year old joins the Marines, graduates from boot camp and is assigned a job as a Humvee driver, the Marine Corps doesn't care if the kid has been licensed by the state to drive for 4 years. The USMC teaches them to drive in a simulator. Our armed services use simulators, because they are safe, cost effective and they work.

Few if any driving schools use simulators to teach new drivers. (we are the first in California) Why? Because most driving schools are about one thing and one thing only. Collecting the money for the DMV mandated 6 hours of required training. We've had young drivers show up who had all the required training at another school and had never been on the Freeway! Learning to drive on a Freeway is not required by the DMV!

When a teen finishes with 18 hours of simulator training, we feel confident that they can drive a real car and then we can begin teaching them the nuances of safe, defensive driving because we don't have to waste time teaching them to get out of the parking lot!

I talked with the mother of a student driver the other day, her son has taken one lesson at another school, that was 3 and half weeks ago and the 2nd lesson wasn't scheduled for another 2 weeks. 6 weeks between lessons, try that when you're learning to play the piano or swim or make the soccer team.

Our simulators are in a clean, quiet, cool room, but with the click of a mouse it can be raining, snowing, daytime, nighttime or even foggy just like is on our beautiful coast from time to time. The simulator programs can put them in dangerous situations without putting them in danger. Better yet the simulator teaches the student how to deal with a dangerous situation in the proper way.

I've had operators of other driving schools laugh at our investment in simulators, then again they haven't seen a 15 year old girl who after completing her simulator training get behind the wheel of a real car and drive better than one of their students who have been taking behind the wheel lessons for hours and hours and are barely up to the task of making an unprotected left turn!

R. Christy, Thanks for your time.
http://www.drive-driverstraining.com/

Are we stupid? Why, as a matter of fact, we are!

                                 73% of all teen deaths are caused by motor vehicle accidents.

As a society we have "Wars" on drug abuse, teen suicide, cancer, etc. Why don't we have a "War" on teen traffic fatalities? The easiest of all these causes of death to cure. From where I sit and from what I've learned the reason we haven't addressed this is, as Americans, we think of driving a car as a right, not a privilege. Add to the fact everybody drives, right? Because of that attitude, we don't care about these kids.

Think of it this way, where I live in Southern California most of our public high schools are 9th-12th grade institutions, some have 4-500 kids in each class. What would we think if the entire 10th grade class disappeared over night? Dead, gone, goodbye. That is what happens in California every year and just for good measure an additional 100 or more people die right along with them. Would people pay attention? Of course they would. But when those deaths occur over a period of 12 months and are spread over our entire state, nobody pays any attention. Nobody cares, except for their families and friends

Drivers  Training has been around for over a 100 years and other than having to spend hours and hours teaching drivers how to start the car. (cranks, spark and throttle settings) The training regimen has changed very little. Much of California's training guidelines have been around for 60 years and I don't have time to list all the changes that have happened since then, do I?

I'll leave you with this thought. Back in the Muscle Car era, you'd be hard pressed to find a parent who would hand the keys to a Z-28 Camaro, a Boss Mustang, a Pontiac GTO or a Hemi 'Cuda to a 16 year old driver. I've got news for you, based on standard performance tests, a stock, plain jane, Toyota Camry V6 will blow the doors off any of those vaunted muscle cars!

This blog is dedicated to the 6000 and more teens who have died because we aren't willing to teach them to be safe, competent and confident drivers.

More to come, thanks!

R Christy
http://www.drive-driverstraining.com/