Last Saturday, October 22, I had a chance to tour the Toyota Driving Expectations display at Bass Pro in Denver. There were no teen driver classes going on while I was there though I did get the teen book and the parent's book. I wish I had read the books while I was there. I was intrigued by the Defensive Driving Formula. I could not figure out the meaning and it was not in the book. This week it took a while going through folks at Toyota and at Discovery Channel to find out.
Toyota is using an experiential approach based on "what you see is not what you get." Describing the formula is tacit knowledge best handled verbally so they only printed the formula in the books.
"P = R (ne) T" (I don't know how to type the not equal sign)
"Perception equals Reality that is not equal to the Truth"
According to the verbal part of the program "To achieve this requires a healthy paranoia. "
I like it! I also like the DDC-4, DDC-8 and Alive at 25 programs that the National Safety Council publishes. Those are more analytical and compliance based.
There are many folks who want all their safety served the practical approach of the Toyota way. In the business world that is a market of 27,980,000 firms. It includes entrepreneurs in Minnesota and California in our test markets who are immigrants or are the children of these immigrants. They are looking for practical approaches to safety. Contrasted with the politicized and responsibility evading safety plans of the 20,000 companies in the primary safety market!
One application of the practical approach in driving is one I've used. If you cannot avoid being in East St Louis or Miami or so many other places, the defensive thing you do especially at night might be to kind of ignore stop signs and red lights albeit with caution. The Toyota formula, with its subjective interpretation, makes a whole lot of sense. They do call their program "real-world."
David Sneed
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