MasterDrive was founded by Ronn Langford in 1986 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He made the decision after a personal tragedy in his family. In August of 1986, Ronn’s youngest daughter Dorri, who had recently graduated from high school, was killed in a car crash. She was coming home from a movie, and her car was hit by a drunk driver.
Ronn’s background in racing and coaching more than 1,400 national race drivers over many years, gave him the background and knowledge to begin to study what was needed to train a new driver. The motivation to create The MasterDrive Experience, a much more extensive training program than the traditional “D. E. program”, stemmed from this personal tragedy.
Teen drivers are at enormous risk. More than 300,000 teens are seriously injured in car crashes in this country each year – brain injuries, broken backs, paraplegics, etc. Many thousands of kids are killed in car crashes each year.
All of the safety organizations quote the data regarding teen drivers, and yet, there had not been a proactive training program to prepare a teen – until the creation of The MasterDrive Experience.
There is also risk to a teen’s family, and to everyone else on the road. Through better preparation, the risks to teens can be significantly reduced.
Everyone knows that the biggest cause of teen fatalities is the lack of “experience”. Everyone agrees! The challenge is to create an “experience” in which they can learn. That is what Ronn decided to do. To take what he knew about learning and performance strategies, mental states, and the development of decision making, and apply it to the new driver.
Since that time, more than 100,000 teens have been through this very comprehensive training program.
New companies with a new paradigm and strategies that substantially differ from the typical, take time to gain validity and acceptance from the community. Not so with MasterDrive. Immediately families started referring friends, and giving testimonials about how the training had saved their kid from a crash and perhaps saved their life.
MasterDrive’s mission to save kids’ lives and protect the family remains the centric objective of the company. As MasterDrive continued to grow, a totally unique program for teen’s with learning difficulties and special needs was developed.
Students defined with a variety of functional difficulties – ADHD, Aspergers Syndrome, CP, Autism, brain injuries, etc. – were able to improve their functional and performance abilities and become skillful drivers. The unique strategies of this program have been presented to the ADED national conference as a one day workshop for six of the last 10 years. This workshop prepares Certified Rehabilitation Specialists from over the United States and Canada to work with kids with special needs, to learn how to drive. It works so well that it changes a student’s quality of life. Corporations began seeking specialized training when the teenagers of their executives and safety managers began to outperform the drivers they had on staff. Courts began to seek training for youthful offenders of traffic laws. Judges even reported these youthful violators returning, of their own volition, to thank the judge for sending them to MasterDrive!
Additional programs have been developed to train Emergency Vehicle Operators, EVO Instructor training, Police Officers, Firefighters and Emergency Medical Service providers. MasterDrive has developed and executed a unique training program for U. S. Army Special Forces going into Bosnia over a three year period.
MasterDrive has developed training operations in Denver, northern Colorado, and southern California. In the future, MasterDrive will be expanding ‘MasterDrive Live’ through training and licensing other driving schools. And through ‘MasterDrive Digital’, to develop digital educational programs to be delivered through the internet.