The Young Driver Safety Institute Proactive-Predictive Training Document Pack: Train More......Crash Less

Driving is the most dangerous activity most of us will ever do. In a few seconds the thin line between life and death can be crossed. In this unique program, based on exhaustive best-practices research, The Young Driver Safety Institute provides readers with the skilled guidance and critical information needed to conduct an effective home-based driver's instruction course. Using the new proactive-predictive driving format the YDSI Workbook is filled with the forms, inventories and informational handouts you need to train yourself, a teen or a senior driver struggling to maintain their license. There are three very unique elements of the YDSI program. First, we begin with the assumption that government authorities and public and private drivers training companies do not have the time or resources to actually teach more than the very minimal skills and information needed to operate a motor vehicle. What happens, then, is that it falls to caregivers (in the case of new drivers) and caregivers (in the case of elderly drivers working to maintain a license) to provide the hundreds of hours of on-road training needed. For this they are almost always unequipped and must rely upon their on-road experiences which have most likely been negative. (Most of us tend to follow-the-leader when driving which results in a ?dumbing-down" effect ? a regression toward the mean in driving technique, which is generally quite low in this country. Second, we have developed our program working from an exhaustive and ongoing review of the relevant research and then ?reverse-engineering? targeted strategies for training drivers to avoid or prevent the major causes of car crashes. Third, the techniques which we have developed as outlined in this Document Pack and the accompanying Workbook are to a large degree unique in the driver?s training field. Working outward from the research and then honing the techniques developed from there has allowed us a unique perspective on driving and how to train drivers you will not find elsewhere. This Document Pack of forms, inventories and informational handouts comprises the backbone of the YDSI Proactive-Predictive Driving Program. It is intended to be used along with the YDSI Proactive-Predictive Training Workbook (Teen or Senior version) and a formal drivers training course and an extended period of on-road caregiver coaching (for teen readers). You are welcome to skip ahead at any time to the documents. The discussion that follows provides a further description of the Young Driver Safety Institute and the state of drivers training today.