If there was an education program out there that when completed, the graduates would end up being responsible for the #1 killer of 4 to 34 year-old people, would you rush to sign up for it?  You probably did.  Would you rush to sign your children up for it?  You probably have or will do in the future.

The education program I’m writing about is “Driver’s Education”.  You know that program, the one that’s required before getting a driver’s license.  Here are a few statistics from the nationwide “Required Driver’s Education” programs:

1.  Traffic crashes are the #1 killer of teenagers.  Teens make up 7% of the drivers on the road but are involved in 20% of the fatalities.

2.  During the first 3 years of driving, 80% of new drivers will be involved in a reportable accident.

3.  The first 10 years of the Iraq-Afghan war killed 6,800 U.S. soldiers while during the same 10 years, 392,603 men, women, and children were killed in automobile accidents.

The “Required Driver’s Education” programs are a complete failure yet millions of parents send their teenagers to these programs every year.  And, it’s not just the teenagers.  If you take a look at the first statistic, couldn’t you also interpret it as:

1.  Adults make up 93% of the drivers on the road but are involves in 80% of the fatalities.

The truth is, the driver education and training methodology that has been taught in the U.S. for the last 75 years is flawed, seriously flawed.  I’ll give you an example.

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Scenario #1.  You’re driving down the road and ahead on the right side of the road, you see a really beautiful woman or a handsome guy and you start to really check them out.  Suddenly, you realize your car is steering right towards them….because you were looking at them too long.

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Scenario #2.  A drunk driver is driving down the road and ahead on the right side of the road is a police car with flashing lights.  The drunk driver steers right towards and crashes into the police car because he was looking at the police car for too long…..because he was drunk.

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Scenario #3.  Your teen is learning how to drive and is driving down the road with you in the passenger seat.  Ahead on the right side of the road is a bicyclist.  Not wanting your teenager to crash into the bicyclist you naturally say, “WATCH OUT FOR THE BICYCLIST”.

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Now what do you think your teenager is naturally going to look at and eventually steer towards?  That’s right, the bicyclist…. just like the drunk driver steered toward the police car and why you steered toward the attractive person on the side of the road.

Congratulations, you’ve just successfully passed down a flawed driver training methodology to your children that emulates the visual search patterns of a drunk driver.

I have spent the last 32 years creating a driver training methodology that eliminates these flaws called the Creating a 5 Star Driver, Beyond Drivers Ed® video series.  If you truly care about making sure your teenager is a safe driver then have them complete my course and become a 5 Star Driver.

John Cullington