The making of Drive Focus
Medical conditions can make returning to drive and maintaining the ability to drive challenging. Vehicle modifications can often overcome physical barriers for driving. But visual and cognitive barriers have been more difficult to overcome because rehabilitation professionals didn’t have useful tools to target visual-cognitive skills for driving until Drive Focus.
Drive Focus was developed by an occupational therapist and certified driver rehabilitation specialist who was inspired by her clients to develop the app. When designing Drive Focus, the must have features were
- Realistic driving experiences
- The ability to slow down the video speed
- The ability to review performance
- Be inexpensive, and
- Fun to play!
For Canada and United States
For Australia
Getting back to driving
Stroke, traumatic brain injury, and other neurological conditions may prevent individuals from getting back to driving right away. Your physician may request that you work with rehabilitation professionals before returning to driving.
Occupational and speech therapists as well as driving rehabilitation specialists will frequently recommend Drive Focus as a way to rehabilitate visual and cognitive skills for driving. Drive Focus targets these skills:
- Attention
- Selective attention (staying focused when there are potential distractors)
- Processing speed (identifying and responding quickly)
- Prioritizing (attending to the most important things first)
At Drive Focus, we recognize that you know how to drive. We also recognize how important driving is for independence. We designed Drive Focus to help rebuild those visual and cognitive skills for driving.
Maintaining the ability to drive
Conditions such as mild cognitive impairment, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis may affect the visual and cognitive skills for driving. The result may be slower reactions to changes in the driving environment.
Occupational and speech therapists as well as driver rehabilitation specialists will frequently recommend Drive Focus as a way to rehabilitate visual and cognitive skills for driving. Drive Focus targets these skills:
- Attention
- Selective attention (staying focused when there are potential distractors)
- Processing speed (identifying and responding quickly)
- Prioritizing (attending to the most important things first)
At Drive Focus, we recognize that you know how to drive. We also recognize how important driving is for independence. Drive Focus was designed to help rebuild those visual and cognitive skills for driving.
Learning to Drive
Every action a driver takes starts with being aware of their surroundings. A driver needs to notice routine roadway information like traffic lights as well as hazardous situations like a pedestrian stepping out. But no driver can pay attention to everything all at once. Drive Focus teaches you what to notice and when it is important. If you develop efficient search skills, you will improve your reactions as a driver.
For Canada and United States
For Australia
Who should use Drive Focus
Drive Focus was designed for learner drivers of all abilities. No matter your learning style we made Drive Focus with you in mind. Drive Focus is ideal for visual learners but there are features that make it appealing for those who are kinesthetic learners, auditory learners, and those who prefer learning by way of rules and logic.
When to use Drive Focus
A driving instructor, rehabilitation professional, OT Driver Assessor, or Driver Rehabilitation Specialist may recommend Drive Focus before you start to drive to build your visual search skills for driving. They may also recommend Drive Focus during your driver training sessions.
Drive Focus can be used at home, office, or both. Drive Focus is cloud-based. Using your unique username and password, you can seamlessly switch between any device in any setting.
Realistic Driving Experiences
Explore interesting destinations and driving environments while improving your road awareness.
Adjustable Video Speed
Adjust the pace of each drive to suit your individual learning needs.
Detailed Feedback
In depth feedback improves your road awareness
Instructional Aid
Enable remote viewing of student and client performance, facilitating customized and personalized feedback.
App Function Walkthrough
Create an account
First you will need to create an account using your email address and a password of your choice.
You will receive a verification email. If you don’t see it within 3 minutes check your spam or junk folder for an email from [email protected].
Click the orange Verify button in the email.
Go to Drive Focus and Sign In with your email and password. And begin using Drive Focus!
Start with the Training section
Select the Critical Items for the AUS or US
Click on the icon of each of the 11 critical items to learn why and when those items are important to notice.
Select a Tour
There are a lot of Tours to select from within Australia, Canada, and the United States. And we keep adding more.
Each Tour has 6-7 Drives. Download a Drive and click on the 11 critical items in order of priority. Each Drive in a Tour gets progressively more challenging. When you get a score of 500 or higher the next Drive will open.
Play the Drives at different speeds. 100% is the speed that the Drive was taken when filmed. But you can also reduce the speed to 80% or 60%.
In the settings you can add the critical item marking to know when the next item is about to appear.
Your score will be reduced if you use the reduce speed and the critical item marking. But it can help to practice with these features.
Review the score
Whether you get a score below or above 500, review the score details to see what critical items you missed. The score details description will tell you the exact item you missed. You will be able to click a link to play back a 3 second clip where the item occurred.
A score of 650-799 or more is a GOOD score. A score of 800 or higher is AMAZING!
We highly recommend shooting for AMAZING. We know you have it in you!!
