My family has operated multiple commercial driver education schools for over 60 years. Long before I invented The Controller®, our instructors were already using the calm, physical “shadowing” techniques my father taught me while training me to fly aircraft. We guided the steering wheel silently, letting the student feel the proper lane boundaries through their hands. It worked beautifully.
But in the 1990s, everything changed. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) introduced the Graduate Driver Licensing (GDL) program. For the first time, the government placed a heavy burden directly on everyday parents, requiring them to spend 50+ hours teaching their teens to drive in the dangerous family car.
The tragedy was that the government handed parents a mandate but didn’t provide a tool.
To this day, standard passenger foot-pedal dual-braking systems are just a “box full of parts” shipped without any educational guidance. They provide no haptic feedback. They leave parents defenseless, relying on panicked verbal cues that cause catastrophic stress, severe injuries, and thousands of preventable highway fatalities.
I looked at the heartbreak families were facing and knew in my heart and soul that I had to bridge the gap. I took the aviation cockpit principles of muscle power, paired them with our 60 years of instructional experience, and spent years perfecting a solution.
The result is The Controller® - Driver Training Brake. It is the only universal, non-invasive system that instantly transforms the family car into a dual-controlled, aviation-grade training cockpit, complete with a physical haptic communication system.
I am now in my 70s, and as I look out at our tools saving lives across all 50 US states and in expanding markets worldwide, I have never been prouder. My mission has always been to protect your family, bring peace to the passenger seat, and ensure every young driver develops the muscle memory to drive safely.
David W. McGinnis, Founder & Inventor, Driving Success Inc.