Due diligence and employees who drive; we have long way to go! I was chatting with a friend and colleague ... Read more The post Driver Due Diligence first appeared on Thinking Driver ..read more

Motorcycles are the safest vehicle on the road. Right up until the point of impact. I have been a rider ... Read more The post Open your eyes! Its motorcycle season! first appeared on Thinking Driver ..read more

Are you a legend in your own mind? There is only one fundamental goal in vehicle control for driving excellence ... Read more The post Five Fundamentals – Control With Finesse first appeared on Thinking Driver ..read more

Do you buy lottery tickets?  I do.  Our chances of winning big are really quite slim and yet every month we still buy those tickets in hope of getting lucky.  As they say; if you don’t play, you can’t win!  The more tickets that you buy… The greater your chances, so some of us buy plenty! Driving risk is in many ways like buying lottery tickets, only it’s kind of an anti-lottery… You see, the probability of disaster because you take a chance is also slim, but you might just hit the jackpot that one time and end up in a serious crash.  And some of us are heavy players i ..read more

We used to play a video game called Space Invaders, where you had to destroy little spaceships as they appeared on the screen.  While it pales in comparison to today’s games, it was pretty hi tech for its time.  Space invaders can be a problem when we are driving too. While space may be the final frontier, it’s also one of the most important elements of safe driving.  The third of Thinking Driver’s Five Fundamentals is Keep Your Options Open.  Keeping your options open means to keep as much space around you as you can when you drive.  Space in front, to the sides and t ..read more

Can you predict the future? I’m not clairvoyant, but I can see into the future and so can you! The second Thinking Driver Fundamentals is ANTICIPATE HAZARDS.  A thinking driver first uses their eyes to look ahead to find out what’s going on up front and then analyzes that information to Anticipate Hazards.  Seeing the potential hazard is not enough though.  You need to anticipate what might affect you and then do something about it.  When you anticipate hazards, you are taking a proactive approach to driving instead of a reactive one where you simply wait until something at ..read more

Invisible. Sometimes I feel like the invisible man: mostly when I ride the motorcycle. I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was 13 years old and my start in this business was teaching others to ride. If there is one thing that riding a bike teaches you, it’s that you are on your own out there. We teach new riders to ride as though no one sees you. Drivers seem to look right through motorcyclists and often steer right into one. The most common motorcycle crash involving another vehicle is the intersection crash where the vehicle driver turns left in front of the motorcyclist who is going straig ..read more

In the world of driving instruction, where some folks have been doing it for decades, my four years might seem like a short time. But these years have been full of learning, facing challenges, and the joy of helping others on their journey. This is a personal story of how I become a driving instructor in BC. At first, I didn’t understand why some stayed in this job for so long, but now, as I look back on my own experience, I understand why being a driving instructor in beautiful British Columbia is special. It’s a career that lets you meet new people, work outdoors, and feel proud about teachi ..read more

I remember the days leading up to my own road test like they were yesterday. The anticipation, the jitters, and a whirlwind of questions racing through my mind – “Am I shoulder-checking enough? Should I practice parallel parking one more time? If I cracked a joke would that make the examiner like me, or would that just be weird? And what about offering them gum? Will that earn me some friendly points?” It’s incredible how these seemingly trivial concerns can take over your thoughts as the big day approaches. Now, years later, with countless kilometers under my belt and a wealth of experience t ..read more

When I was young, we had a rotary telephone on the kitchen counter (for those of you under 40, you may have seen one of these babies in a museum!). When someone wanted to get in touch, they called and the phone rang. If no one was home, the caller eventually gave up because there was nothing called an answering machine then. Those came later with those tiny little cassette tapes. If no one was home to answer the phone, you were disappointed, but simply called back. In the intervening years (you can guess how many), we have seen the aforementioned answering machine which morphed into voice mail ..read more