Creating Places and Opportunities to Learn Safe Driving Skills
In a Honda company newsletter published in April of 1969, Honda founder Soichiro Honda stated, “As long as we are dealing with transportation, we want our people to be absolutely responsible. If they cannot take responsibility, I want them to quit immediately.” was not yet a commonly used phrase anywhere. However, within the Honda organization there was already some serious thinking about what role the company needed to play as a manufacturer of personal mobility products like motorcycles and cars.
Imagine, for example, that a young person finally realizes their dream of owning a motorcycle, but then ends up riding it unsafely on public roads, eventually causing an accident. Envisioning these sorts of potential scenarios, Honda felt that it would be a disservice to its customers if they simply relied on stricter regulations without also creating safer places for people to ride. They were also concerned that driving technology wasn’t keeping pace with Japan’s rapidly changing traffic environment. At the time, Japan simply didn’t have places nor opportunities for people to learn safe driving skills.
In 1960, Honda decided to build Japan’s first-ever world-class racing circuit in Suzuka, in part so that young people would have a safe and secure place to ride their motorcycles. This was an unbelievably huge undertaking for a company of its size at the time, however Soichiro Honda had something to prove. His goal was to create a world-class circuit that would be a place to ride and drive safely while also allowing drivers to hone their driving skills without even knowing it. The configuration of the circuit was unique in the world, featuring eighteen corners and numerous rises and falls in elevation, with virtually no flat areas. Honda envisioned a challenging course that would place demands not only on speed but also technique. A place where drivers could naturally develop their driving skills through a challenging driving experience. Embodying this philosophy, the race track was initially named the Suzuka Technical Course (later Suzuka Circuit) and construction was completed in 1962.
In 1964, Honda created the Suzuka Circuit Safe Driving Training Center (later the Suzuka Circuit Traffic Education Center). That same year, the Center’s first training session was held at the request of a police captain from the Chubu region (Japan’s mountainous central region), who was desperate to find ways to prevent deadly motorcycle accidents from decimating his squad of motorcycle patrolmen. Thus, the Center’s first training course was held for these motorcycle police officers. This class emphasized training in basic riding techniques, which were practiced under realistic traffic conditions. The training was also eventually responsible for the setting of a new record of zero fatalities for the region’s motorcycle patrol force, and this success laid the foundation for Honda’s subsequent Safe Driving education initiatives.
Police motorcycle team training at the Suzuka Circuit Safe Driving Training Center,
the roots of Honda’s safe driving education.
Safer Products Embodying Fun and Correct Riding
By 1970, Japan was fully into a new era of total motorization. However the dark side of this modernization was that traffic accident deaths reached a new high that year of 16,765. It was also the year that automobile safety-related corporate indictments, then led by American attorney and consumer rights activist Ralph Nader, spread to Japan. Honda, too, was seriously affected.
On September 11th of the same year, senior managing director Michihiro Nishida (who would later become the first general manager of Honda’s Safe Driving Promotion Operations) spoke before the Japanese Diet as a witness in an inquiry concerning Honda’s N360 K-car, which had been cited as having numerous safety problems. When a Diet member asked for public testing to verify the safety of Honda vehicles, Nishida replied without hesitation that Honda would surely embrace and look forward to such public testing. As it happened, the need to actually perform such testing was eventually dropped, but having so definitively expressed the company’s willingness in front of the Japanese Diet, Nishida felt that Honda as a company should still take further action on the issue.
Nishida consulted with both Soichiro Honda and Executive Vice President Takeo Fujisawa about what to do. He began, “I think we have to recognize that while cars are generally considered consumer products, it’s not just the ‘hardware’; we also have to consider the ‘software’ element that’s inherently a big part of the product we’re selling.” He also emphasized the connection between Honda products and safety education, and urged that motorcycle safety education, which the company had been offering to riders in the government and corporate sectors since 1964, should be expanded to general consumers, and that the same know-how and expertise should be applied to cars as well.
Honda approved Nishida’s proposal immediately, and just twenty days later, in October of 1970, the company created a new Traffic Safety Promotion Operations. Even though there was no precedent on which to model this new corporate function, Honda moved quickly to create it because it realized that the faster it could be done, the more lives might be saved.
Instructor training at the Suzuka Circuit Safe Driving Training Center
A Sincere Connection Between the Users and the Makers
Honda had come to realization that car manufacturers have an innate social responsibility to do everything possible to protect the safety of the people who use their cars, and the company was determined to take the initiative in playing a leading role in reducing traffic accidents both in Japan and around the world.
In order to inform the public about Honda’s corporate commitment to safe driving, in March of 1971 Honda placed a full-page advertisement in major Japanese newspapers that featured the titles “Announcement” and “Mr. Lunney’s Story.” This ad mentioned no Honda products, but instead listed a number of commitments that Honda intended to make in the interests of society. Among these were “promoting safe driving,” “100 percent inspections,” and “developing low-pollution engines.” Eleven specific activities were also listed, including the training of Safe Driving instructors and promotion and support for the formation of Safe Driving clubs. Also included was a dialogue between Soichiro Honda and Glynn Lunney, who had been in the control room during NASA’s (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) miraculously successful effort to bring the crew of the damaged Apollo 13 spacecraft safely back to Earth.
Mr. Lunney’s story was introduced as a simple expression of Honda’s belief that although machines and technology may be advancing, people were still the basis for these things, and it encapsulated Honda’s fundamental stance that “corporate activities should be founded on the sincere connection between the people who use things and the people who make them.”
In the section where Soichiro Honda talks about Mr. Lunney, he writes: “The successful return of those astronauts didn’t happen by automatic control of the machinery involved, but rather because human beings were in control at each and every critical point.... Lunney may have only been thirty-two years old by the time of Apollo 13, but he’d been living with the astronauts since he was twenty-six, with the intent of understanding them as thoroughly as possible. By the time of the mission he had an incisive understanding of their individual habits, and could infer what they were thinking and what they wanted just by listening to their voices... Particularly today, with the seemingly unlimited progress of mechanization, it’s more important than ever to have a real, heartfelt connections with people, as well as communication between the people who use these machines and the people who make them.”
Once the activities of Honda’s Safe Driving Operations had been clarified, understanding of its purpose and importance quickly spread among Honda’s dealerships nationwide, and many of those who supported the initiative began signing up to obtain certification as Safe Driving instructors. By 1972 over 8,000 people had been certified, and over 60,000 had participated in Honda’s Safe Driving seminars. The presence of these trained instructors, who had united to “protect customers from accidents through their sincere words and efforts,” has consistently been the driving force behind the “person-to-person safety” initiative that continues to this day.
Honda SENSING Experience Program
Traffic safety class using the “Ayatorii Hiyoko”Educational program
Communicating safety from
one person to the next.
Honda motorcycle and automobile dealerships provide customers with excellent safety advice, with some even providing motorcycle riding schools or driver training sessions. Additionally, some of our car dealerships train their staff as instructors of traffic safety classes for young children. Besides holding driver training classes in their dealerships, they also visit local nursery schools and kindergartens in order to conduct traffic safety classes.
Safely Experiencing the Dangers of Driving
In addition to the “person-to-person safety” activities of its dealerships, Honda’s Traffic Safety Promotion Operations also promoted efforts to improve driving skills among individual drivers. However, its educational program was based on that of the Suzuka Circuit Safe Driving Training Center, which was designed to train motorcycle police officers. So, besides emphasizing hands-on training, it also focused on the rigorous group discipline required of a police force. For this reason, the aims and role of Safe Driving Operations had to be very different from those that would apply to ordinary riders and drivers.
At the 3rd Safe Driving Promotion Activity Meeting held in April of 1972, Soichiro Honda had this to say: “The most important thing is to safely let people experience danger. This has to be the basis of all instructions in driving safety.” Safety always borders on danger, so people need to understand just what that danger is, not only intellectually, but also through the physicality of their bodies. Therefore, the basic philosophy underlying Honda’s Safe Driving seminars was to allow ordinary riders and drivers to experience danger in the safest manner possible.
Eventually, Honda’s Safe Driving training evolved into a unified system with educational programs shared by ordinary riders and drivers, professional drivers, driving instructors (at Safe Driving Operations and Honda’s regional and prefectural branches and Traffic Education Centers), and through the specialized facilities of Honda’s Traffic Education Centers.
In 1980, based on experience accumulated over the previous ten years, Honda systematized its driving education system to create a “Honda method,” and made efforts to standardize the contents of its curriculums and textbooks, with the goal of making the dissemination of Safe Driving education even more effective.
The Honda Motorcyclist School (HMS) started out in 1978 as a two-day overnight course at the Suzuka Circuit Traffic Education Center, but was reorganized to be a one-day course in 1982, and expanded nationwide. Then, in 1991, Honda started the Honda Driving School (HDS) for car drivers. Both the HMS and HDS courses are based on the concept of practical, hands-on education using actual vehicles so that people can experience for themselves all the techniques involved in driving.
Although first established in Suzuka, the Traffic Education Center now conducts training sessions in seven locations nationwide, offering a wide range of programs that give people the opportunity to learn about, experience and improve their riding and driving safety. Instead of focusing only on the “hard” aspect of cars and motorcycles as they continue to change and evolve, the course also emphasizes less tangible “soft” characteristics, like driver mindset and driving techniques.
As it turns out, there’s a limit to how effective traffic safety education can be if limited to simply teaching driving skills and knowledge from a textbook. In fact, it’s especially difficult to teach people about the many hazards that can occur on the real streets and roads of the world. To address this limitation, Safe Driving Headquarters made the decision to fortify its research and software development by launching two additional initiatives.
In addition to its numerous Safe Driving schools,
Honda also operates its own Traffic Education Centers.
Suzuka Circuit Traffic Education Center
In June of 1972, Rainbow Motor School, Inc. (later Honda Rainbow Motor School) was established as a spin-off of Honda Kaihatsu Co.’s driving school division. Rather than merely offering training to pass the test for driver’s licenses, Rainbow wanted to provide Safe Driving lessons to government and company-related motorcycle riders and car drivers. It also began conducting research into safe driving in order to develop more effective educational systems. Currently, Rainbow operates five of Honda’s seven Traffic Education Centers nationwide (in Wakō, Saitama, Hamanako, Fukuoka, and Kumamoto. The others, in Motegi and Suzuka, are operated by Honda Mobilityland Co.).
Traffic Education Centers in 7 locations nationwide
Acute traffic situation awareness- Hazard prediction training - for automobiles
The first involved the development of “Hazard Prediction Training” materials. Recognizing the need to make drivers aware of what specific hazards might be encountered on the road, the Traffic Education Center began producing printed KYT(Kiken yosoku training) materials in the 1980s. These materials were distributed to all companies taking advantage of Traffic Education Center programs, and were also used in the various driving safety training programs run by other companies and organizations.
A formal textbook entitled How to Read Traffic Situations - Hazard Prediction Training for Car Drivers was completed in 1996 (a version for motorcycle riders followed in 1997). Based on analysis of actual traffic accidents, this textbook covers 200 dangerous situations (50 for the motorcycle version) that could be encountered on the road. Written not only to help drivers and motorcycle riders recognize specific hazards, but this textbook also teaches people about the causes of accidents and the psychology of driving. Easy-to-use teaching materials such as these have greatly contributed to the spread of hazard prediction training.
The second initiative involved helping people to learn about safe driving by finding ways to have them safely experience the kinds of traffic accidents that are most likely to occur on the road. Honda then began exploring the use of simulators for this kind of driver education. The company didn’t yet have such a simulator at the start, but in the spirit of “if something’s missing, make it yourself,” Honda worked to develop a simulator of its own that would allow driving students to experience a range of dangerous situations in a more realistic manner. Honda then introduced its own Honda Motorcycle Riding Simulator in 1996 to coincide with the introduction of its ‘Big Bike’ license training program. Honda has continued to develop advanced educational equipment such as this, releasing the Honda Automobile Driving Simulator in 2001 and the Honda Bicycle Simulator in 2010.
Honda Motorcycle Riding Simulator, the world's first*1 educational riding simulator
Honda automobile driving simulator
Honda bicycle simulator
Simulators for motorcycles,
cars, and even bicycles
Simulator training was first introduced at driving schools in 1996, together with the implementation of Big Bike* license training system. Honda also later developed the world’s first motorcycle riding simulator for educational use, with added functions that allowed students to experience most of a motorcycle’s unique characteristics in various riding situations. Honda’s Automobile Driving Simulator was released in 2001 for the education of novice drivers, and was the first to adopt a 6-axis motion base (oscillation device), which enabled a more realistic sensation of acceleration and deceleration. The Bicycle Simulator released in 2010 was introduced by the police and local governments for use in bicycle riding education for both children and the elderly.
- In Japan, all motorcycles over 400cc, or Big Bikes, require a special license for which testing is especially difficult.
- Honda research
