As a young man, I was very interested in cars and drove everything I could. Luckily the neighbor across the street owned a car dealership; his son and I drove every motorized vehicle we could get hands-on. It gave me a sound understanding of the machine called car but — Were we good drivers?
Serious Crash
My closest friend ran a stop sign in my second year of college. A crossing gravel truck smashed him up pretty bad. He lost his ability to speak and walk for the next six years. I was shocked because I thought — We were good drivers!
My business and finance education directed me into stock brokerage houses, but I kept looking at road safety groups. I bought a car, got my driving instructor’s license from Young Drivers of Canada plus my classroom license from the Ontario Safety League and started teaching evenings and weekends at several driving schools.
13 Years
For the next 13 years, I stood in front of 100 different new drivers a week, ages 16 to 91, both in the classroom and on the road, including several high school contracts, fleet and business drivers: Environment Canada, Nurses Association of Ontario, and National Silicates – teaching programs such as Defensive Driving Course, Seniors Driving, 55 Stay Alive, Winter Driving and Skid Control.
Corporate Work
My corporate work took me deeper into bigger groups like the Regional Municipality of Ottawa Carlton, City of Kanata, & Gloucester Township. Eventually, I worked with CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, training their top trainers nationwide. And finally, I worked with the Ergonomics Division of Transport Canada on Sue MacNeil’s cell phone study as a lead assessor for the applied science group, asking if cell phones increase a driver’s risk of a crash.
Transport Canada
Preparation for this Transport Canada work involved intense training on The Effects of Disease and Driving, The Aging Process, Stress Anxiety and Driving, Trauma Course, Decision-Making and the Driving Task, Road Safety Facilitator’s Program, and Evaluators Assessors Training.
Instilling a seriousness for driving into every driver I meet is my goal. Come, and have a great conversation about your driving and what a good driver is.
Vancouver Work
I moved to B. C. in 2019 after many years in several other careers. Reentering driver training has been an surprising discovery. I love it. Learning, while moving along in a car, in traffic, is exciting and never boring. Come talk about
what a good driver is. Better yet come become that good driver.
