It used to be that a number of professionals (pilots, police, military) would not survive an emergency despite possessing the skill to do so. Why? It turns out that the application of skill when it is most needed is a decision-making process and not just a skill-based exercise.
The aeronautical decision-making (ADM) model, provided below in PDF, got its start in aviation. Denis has introduced and adapted that decision-making model to many other activities and industries since then to include military, medical, trucking, student driving, marine, and law enforcement. He is a founding co-author of ADM.
Student drivers, especially, can and should learn decision making skills, mostly because they are generally a group young in age and have limited experience operating in a complex and dynamic environment that characterize today's roadways. And especially today, many drivers falsely believe that they can "multitask" while driving. This is what they believe without any kind of test to determine that ability. The result is that many of those believers are among the 40,000+ roadway fatalities each year.
One driving example: we often see drivers stopped at a red light thinking that this is an opportunity to text or surf online. What they fail to realize is that the environment around them is constantly changing. Stopped at a traffic light requires attention so that when the light turns green the driver has a firm grasp on the environment that he or she is entering--a police vehicle may have rapidly entered the scene with flashing emergency lights but no siren and the distracted driver has no idea about that.
