The Toyota Car Control Challenge Story

The automobile is the number one killer of young people between the ages of 15 and 19 world-wide. In the US alone each year we lose nearly 7000 young people to fatal crashes. Why? FARS data (Fatal Accident Reporting System) shows that the investigating officers chose “driver error’ as the lead cause in over 80% of the crashes. Not drugs, not alcohol—driver error. And the “why” of that is simply this. Traditional and current driver education curricula—mandated by state Departments of Education, Boards of Education and Departments of Highway Safety contain absolutely no requirement for simulating crashes on a training range—none. The nation is releasing annually up to 3 million new drivers into the increasingly dangerous traffic stream with NO prior exposure to an automobile under extreme, high speed, crash avoidance demands.

 

So what do we get? Inexperience of the most intense nature. Not a clue.

Can You Hit the Curve Ball?

Fifteen years ago, David Thornhill Thompson, automotive journalist and amateur racing competitor, analyzed the Anatomy of an Accident producing a simple understanding of what happens to each of us “the first time.” Some new drivers survive and learn, for others it takes more times at bat to hit the curves thrown at us. And that produces driver error, some of it fatal. Young drivers are the highest producers of single car accidents, almost 50%.

 

From there Thompson created the book and video curriculum entitled “New Driver Car Control, From Kamikaze to Competent” the idea being that society needed not only to teach the young pilot how to take off, but also how to land well.

 

Thus Thompson has been on a 15-year quest to wake up parents, legislators, teachers and administrators to an ugly truth. Giving a child a drivers license can be in some ways a poison pill if it hasn’t been preceded by true driver training, not just lectures, videos, benign trips around a parking lot and retention testing. The red lights described in The Anatomy of An Accident are the real deal. They demand more preparation.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

So The Toyota Car Control Challenge is an extension of that quest. Designed to capture the attention of parents of teen drivers, the drivers themselves and all of society The Challenge is intended to accomplish these goals:

 

To offer young drivers positive incentives and recognition for safe and
skillful driving.

 

To raise public and parental awareness of the problem of teen driver crashes and the need for increased training.

 

To help parents fulfill their expanded responsibilities under the graduated licensing laws and regulations.

 

To demonstrate the values of alternative driver training techniques.