The world around us has changed! Modern driving entails risks and hazards that pose challenges very different from those faced in the past. Maximizing your safety on the road requires an updated, smarter approach to the driving task!
Automobiles, SUVs and trucks being built today are the safest vehicles ever made available. Designed crush zones, airbags, proximity sensors and cameras, automated collision avoidance systems – the technology integrated into new vehicles today make them by far the safest ever constructed. Despite this, traffic accident fatalities are increasing!
For 2016 specifically, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data shows 37,461 people were killed in 34,436 motor vehicle crashes, an average of 102 per day. In 2010, there were an estimated 5,419,000 crashes, 30,296 of with fatalities, killing 32,999, and injuring 2,239,000.
Why are accident rates and fatalities increasing despite the vehicles we drive featuring greater technology aimed at making us all safer? Because despite the vehicles themselves being safer, the humans operating the vehicles are lacking in the skills required to safely navigate today’s high risk traffic environment.
Increased Traffic Congestion...
Increasing Traffic Fatalities
This is Not Your Grandfathers Traffic!
The environment into which you travel every time you get behind the wheel has changed. The risks faced today are increased. The volume of traffic that occupies our road networks has increased exponentially while the road networks themselves have not begun to keep pace. We are not expanding our roads at anywhere near the rate our population is growing. This reality results in increased general traffic congestion making safely navigating today’s roads more difficult and dangerous.
While the safety technology integrated into new vehicles today aids in both avoiding and surviving accidents, some of the most popular and widely adopted new technologies are moving the broad safety reality in the opposite direction. Smart phones and other always connected technologies are directly linked to the soaring rates of distracted driving and the increased accident and fatality rates associated with distracted driving.
The NDSI is focused on addressing both of these critical issues.
Poor Skills Focus
While our daily driving realities have radically changed in recent years, the broad approach to driver education has remained the same. Rather than modify our approach to teaching driver education to focus on areas of increased risk through teaching new approaches to the driving task aimed at mitigating these risks, driver education has remained largely static. The primary focus of defensive driver and general driver improvement course content is largely unchanged from 50 years ago.
Traffic accident rates are not increasing because individuals behind the wheel do not understand what a stop sign means. Focusing defensive driver course content on detailed explanations of how state regulatory bodies are organized and operate aids nobody when it comes to improving road safety. Extensive explanations relative to different types of driver licenses and means by which the state regulates licensing is not going to reduce traffic accident rates. Yet all of these are topics specifically mandated by state regulatory bodies when driver education course curriculum are evaluated and approved.
To be best prepared to safely navigate todays driving reality, driver education should focus on teaching specific strategic approaches to the driving task along with tactical skills be to mastered and employed instantly when faced with a dangerous driving scenario.
Improved Mental Approach
The heart of effective, modern defensive driving and driver improvement course content must be focused on teaching an improved overall mental approach to the driving task. The NDSI recognizes the critical importance associated with a proper mental attitude and structures all online driving focused content around teaching core mental processes proven effective relative to improving mental focus, safe task completion and preparedness for rapid response to emergency situations. A structured approach to building new driving habits that encompasses a number of learned skills proven to aid in consistently improving ongoing situational awareness behind the wheel is critical to effective course content material. This is the key focus for NDSI content development and is the primary impetus behind the “I See & Act” center point of NDSI defensive driver and driver improvement course material.
New Mental Approach + Improved Skills =
Less of This!
Safely Build New Skills
Improve Your Fundamentals!
Targeted Skills Education
The NDSI has developed exclusive content specifically aimed at assisting the defensive driver course student relative to understanding the crucial need for core defensive driving skills and methods to aid in developing these skills. From playing the "What If ?"" if game to covering the brake, correct situational awareness exercises, proper skid control, risk recognition tactics and more, the educational content advocated by the NDSI is focused on improving a drivers ability to avoid collisions in today’s high risk environment.
Mutual Inclusion
The NDSI recognizes the need and regulatory requirement for traditional defensive driver and driver improvement content while also embracing a focus on content specifically aimed at the increased risks that make up the reality of modern driving. Providing cutting edge content is not mutually exclusive with covering traditional content. The NDSI embraces a philosophy of mutual inclusion to ensure that both traditional content and updated modern risk focused content are included in all of the course materials developed and distributed through our clients and partners.
