By Pam Kiriakidis
WALLAN Driving School owner Daniel Lombardo and resident Michael Treacher have created a driving app that provides courses for learners and apprehensive drivers across the Mitchell Shire and surrounds.
Launched earlier this month, ‘Let’s Drive’ currently has more than 30 routes relevant to the Mitchell Shire and surrounding areas – including Wallan, Kilmore, Seymour, Sunbury – which puts drivers in real-life situations, using turn-by-turn navigation via the car stereo system.
Mr Treacher said the app, built in partnership with professional driving instructors, complemented regular driving schools.
“There’s a lot of pressure on parents to provide opportunities for children that exposes them to a wide range of driving situations,” he said.
“[The app] can be used to support parents to achieve this so they can focus more on the driving that their children are doing, rather than both the driving and the route.
“What happens a lot of the time is it’d be like ‘alright, let’s drive to the shops and back’ … and it’s just the same things over and over again. It’s not really preparing them for a lot of the real-life kind of driving scenarios.”
The idea progressed when Mr Treacher was taking his own driving lessons four years ago with Mr Lombardo, who has been operating his driving school in the Mitchell Shire for 23 years.
“We got to talk about some of the ideas that he had, and we realised that we both kind of shared a passion for improving the quality of driving on the road in general.”
“During one of my lessons he asked what I did for living, I told him that I was a software engineer, and basically he had some ideas in mind, like some things that he thought software could help solve,” Mr Treacher said.
The teacher and learner became business partners and started a company called Better Your Driving, with a vision to promote responsible driving.
“[Daniel] found that majority of students that came to him, especially in regional areas, had tended to log their 120 hours mostly driving on country roads or highways,” Mr Treacher said.
“He found that when they got into real kinds of situations where they make judgement calls, they didn’t know how to give way at traffic lights, when there’s a right turn – all those types of things.”
“I guess this app basically gives drivers additional options to get exposure to some of the driving scenarios, like a qualified instructor would expose them to or that they may encounter on their driving test.”
While the app is available on the Apple Store, there are plans to make it accessible for Android phones.
Mr Treacher said the next step was to work with driving instructors to create more routes for different locations across Victoria.
For more information on the app, visit the Facebook page Better Your Driving, or email hello@betteryourdriving.com to suggest location ideas to cover on the app.
