Kia Young Drivers Program - Finding A Cure For Driveaholics

VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA – June 29, 2010: A Victorian based driver education program designed to change the driving attitudes and habits of young people is being praised by parents, experts and educators alike.

Kia Young Drivers was born following a change in focus by Drive Skill International, a corporate driver training group tasked with curbing poor habits within corporate fleets. After seeing a reduction in some clients' vehicle insurance claims of up to 78% the organisation decided to diversify and try to make a difference with young drivers.

In early 2007, with 20 years of corporate experience, Kia Young Drivers began targeting young teens who either had or were soon eligible to get their learner permit.

Since then the program has taken off with more than 3000 students expected to take part in the course during 2010, an increase of 1000 students from 2009.

Kia Young Drivers Chief Instructor, Geoff Fickling, says the key to reaching young drivers is in understanding how they think.

"All young drivers fall into two categories depending their core belief or 'Motorvation' as we call it. They are all born with this Motorvation, based on their interest in cars, personality type and gender," Mr Fickling said.

"We have 'Demure Drivers' who believe they'll be safe because they're more careful than other drivers, and we have 'Dominant Drivers', the most aggressive of whom we call 'Driveaholics', who believe they'll be safe because they're more skilled than other drivers.

"While Demure Drivers are reasonably cautious, they have no idea of what to do if things go wrong, and are scared to learn. Dominant Drivers, on the other hand, are generally more skilled, but they feel invincible, which leads to risk-taking.

"There is a lot of comment in the media at the moment about how best to save our youth from themselves on the road. Increasing speed limits and encouraging advanced driver training is the deadliest of combinations. The key is understanding young people's behaviour types and the attitudes associated with them.

"Motorvate Training achieves this by concentrating on attitude and behaviour change before addressing skill and knowledge development. Because we understand how young drivers think, research shows that Motorvate Training can dramatically reduce crash rates."

The one day courses run for six hours fitting neatly into a normal school day.

Kia Motors Australia has provided the program with five cars. Two Rios with ABS and two without which help reinforce the benefits of technology while teaching depth perception, speed judgement and vision. The fifth vehicle is an eight-seat Grand Carnival people mover to assist with logistics.

Kia Motors Australia President and CEO Mr MK Kim said the program has a very distinct point of difference and is a worthy project to support.

"Being the father of an 'L' plate driver myself, I hold any program which helps young drivers make more responsible decisions on the road in high regard," he said.

"By supporting this program we are undoubtedly saving lives, and not just the lives of young drivers but also the innocent 'others' who are often a part of accidents by just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"The Kia Rio is also the right car for the job. It's our entry level vehicle so it's highly likely that quite a few of the people attending the course will be able to afford a car like this very early in their driving life."

More than 80 schools currently participate in the Kia Young Drivers program throughout Victoria but due to the program's success Mr Fickling is in the process of rolling the program out to other states, and making the course more "mobile", allowing it to visit places where there is only limited open space for the practical component.