What is the primary goal of the instructor: protector or educator?
Your initial response may well be:
‘To keep the drivers safe and facilitate learning while they learn to keep themselves safe.’
This immediately points many towards the GDE Matrix. However this is often misunderstood to be about crash causation, when it is actually about the factors that influence behaviour and risk.
If the driver cannot control the car when needed they will be at risk. This must not be limited to knowing what the car can do, but also what it cannot do. This difference enables them to stay in their zone of control. Mindfulness, conscious understanding and awareness of self are all important contributors to the ability of self-regulation and driving intentionally. This extends to the road rules, factors of the journey, and is led by driver values and beliefs.
Louise Walsh, sadly missed and respected ADI and trainer, once said:
“I don’t think I want my pupils to be able to drive safely… I want them to be able to choose to drive dangerously.”
Safe driving is not the absence of dangerous options. It’s understanding the consequences of those options and consciously choosing between them. And then making the informed choice.
Independent. Informed. In control – not just of the machine, but themselves and those sharing their space.
Therefore, what is the primary goal of the instructor; protector or educator? Traditionally we define the role of driving instructor as ‘creating safe drivers’, but this is an oversimplification.
As we look closer at the position, our job is to create:
‘Drivers capable of making informed decisions, whether safe or unsafe’
The role of the instructor is not to be responsible for the decision, but responsible for the understanding behind the decision.
See the Control → Understanding → Choice → Responsibility model below (© Chris Bensted)
