Drive Community Toolkit

In New Zealand’s more deprived communities, an inability to get a driver's licence & driving ‘in breach of the law’ is becoming an ‘embedded norm’. It’s estimated that up to 90,000 young New Zealanders face barriers to achieving their drivers licence. Our big goal was to actively raise the capability, productivity, and effectiveness of every community driver licence teacher in New Zealand. Our mission was to establish an initiative that supported and united community driving educators across New Zealand, allowing them to continue doing what they were doing best while helping and sharing with each other.

After engaging with over 50 communities across New Zealand, ‘Drive Community’ was created from the insight that providers knew their community best, they simply wanted to feel supported with what they were already doing. The Drive Community Toolkit is the first major product provided by this new initiative. It pulls together 14 best-practice resources designed to make learning-to-drive fun, accessible and engaging — regardless of what stage of licence students are at or what teaching experience the providers may have.

It’s early days for the Toolkit in communities across New Zealand, however demand is already exceeding supply and we’ve had exceptionally positive feedback such as: ‘Studying for a licence is boring. Now this kit will make it exciting. It enables young people to interact with learning to drive in a way they’ve never been able to… A lot of young people struggle to engage for a long time. This, I think we’re going to struggle to get it off them.’ – Eugene Ryder, Community leader

The kinesthetic learning style of the toolkit’s resources was intentionally created to suit those with limited access to the internet, digital technology and/or have learning difficulties. Key resources of the toolkit include Drive VR and Drive Go. Drive Go is a learn-to-drive card game designed to help people learn the road-code. The card game mechanics allow the difficulty of the game to be altered based on experience and literacy levels of the people playing. Young Kiwis become paralysed with fear when facing the practical driving test, which often significantly delays their progress through the licensing system. Drive VR is a free mobile app that places the user behind the wheel in an immersive, interactive 360 video. At the end of the drive you receive a score and feedback on how you could improve, whether that was spotting more hazards, more regular mirror checks or window checks. Annually, approximately 10,000 people aged between 18–24 who sign up for income support don’t have a licence. If obtaining a licence helps 20% of those beneficiaries into a job at minimum wage, their combined income would increase to over $30million in the first year.