How did National Driver Training get started?

National Driver Training’s online program has been used to change more driver education laws in the United States than any other driver education program in the history of driver education in the United States.

Did you know National Driver Training has help support every home school group, private school, public school and legislator who has contacted National Driver Training for help in creating parent taught driver education laws and legislation for their state. We are happy to report we have prevailed, together, on every legislation bill we have supported.

Did you know no other parent taught driver education provider has supported legislation financially or otherwise? National Driver Training has been of the floor each and every time when called upon to witness on behalf of parents and legislators. So, when considering a parent taught driver education program, consider who has helped changed the laws in your state. Also, consider which company has returned thousands of dollars in research and development in protecting our young drivers.

How did The National Driver Training’s program get started?

National Driver Training’s program roots and development history started in the United States Air Force. What seem to be a growing concern and serious problem with cadets in the United States Air Force was their lack of ability to drive to and from the base without getting into a crash. Many of the cadets completed driver education in high school, however the education and training systems being used in the public school systems and commercial driving schools was not working. In fact the cadets that did not have driver education and training through public schools and commercial schools were involved in less crashes than the cadets that did complete such a course. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reached this same conclusion.

Employee’s and researchers of National Driver Training’s program studied the causes of the crashes and the training processes used across the country to teach our young new drivers. After several years of study and research it was concluded that the problem with our young drivers did not exists within the young driver, but within the training process. So while we believe in our education process in the United States it hasn’t proven to be effective in teaching our teens to be collision and crash free.

The teaching process with in it self needed a major overhaul and not even one of our universities in the United States teaching driver education and training had offered any new teaching methods or processes. Several professors, Dr. Charles McDaniel, Dr. George Carmenanti, just to name a few, and developers of the driver education establishments tried to correct the problem by offering new systems in the late 60’s and 70’s, however these new concepts were rejected because of funding issues and the need for new tooling and curriculum development. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety continued to improve ways to make our vehicles and safety equipment safer with better seat belts and safety seats, bumpers that would hold up better, collapsible steering wheels and safety glass, air bags that continue to out perform the year before and still the fatalities continue to rise in numbers, each year higher than the year before.

Two major changes took place in the late 80’s and early 90’s and finally we are seeing a change in the numbers of crashes and fatal collisions. The first thing that occurred was the concept of Graduated Driver Licensing. This training process was modeled after flight school in the United States Air Force.

• We begin with joining the classroom with the behind-the-wheel training process concurrent with one another.
• We add more hours behind-the-wheel to give the new drivers a chance to experience all four seasons and weather conditions under controlled risk factors.
• We remove the 6 hour driver training clock and base achievement and graduation on performance, skill and experence.

The second thing that changed our teaching process was the discovery of the frontal cortex and its development in teenagers. We were trying to teach our new teenagers as if we were traveling on a two-lane dirt road at 35 MPH, when our average traveled speed in the United States exceeds 55 MPH on a six-lane highway. The average family had one vehicle in the fifties and sixties and than went to two in the seventies. Today everyone who is 16 years or older has a vehicle. The day of driving on weekends with mom and dad for the first year or two is over. We are not spending the time to protect our teens and teach them to drive in today’s hectic schedules as should be. Parents need to realize that as the times change we must keep pace with that change.

Our driving generation, 35 years to 50 years old will be remembered as the worse driving generation in the history of the automobile. We average 40,000 fatalities per year and we our generation needs to change the way we think and teach driver education. Think about it, we spend about 12 years on basic education, reading writing, math, history and physical education and only 6 hours behind the wheel training in a vehicle.

Our generation needs to be remembered as the generation that created the best drivers in history. The generation that did something about the way we think and teach driver training. We need every mom and dads help to complete this goal. We need to invest our time in our teenagers and take the time needed to teach our teens to drive better. This could mean as much as 1 or two years of guidance. And to do this you will need the very best curriculum and training videos available and not for just a few months but you will need to allow driver education to become part of your families dinner conversation and sharing experiences on new intersections and changes on the interstate on ramps or maybe a lost of a fellow student friend.

Driver education and training is no longer a project to hire out to the local driving school. Parents need to get involved and stay involved for two or maybe three years. Placing driving restrictions and hours on when a new driver is allowed to drive and with whom.