Champions Skills for Safety, Carlos Sainz's road safety training course

Thanks to the great technological advances in safety in today’s cars, road accident and fatality figures have fallen considerably. However, people’s behaviour behind the wheel still causes a significant number of accidents on the road today.

With the aim of reducing this number of accidents and hospitalised victims, and of putting the focus on drivers’ attitude behind the wheel, Champions Skills for Safety has been created, a road safety training course developed by Carlos Sainz himself, two-time World Rally Champion and three-time Dakar champion, in collaboration with INFOVA, based on learning and training methodologies used by professional racing drivers.

Driver attitude, a decisive factor in driving

The course, as Sainz has pointed out, focuses squarely on road safety, since, as was said at the presentation of the course at the Carlos Sainz Karting centre in Las Rozas, Madrid, “accidents often do not come from a lack of driving skill, but from the driver’s attitude“, which is why it is of vital importance to “raise awareness and show how attitude affects driving, which is just as important as knowing how to drive”, the driver stated.

Óscar Fuertes, CEO of INFOVA and a driver whose record includes first place in the Dakar Challenge 2017, best Rookie at the Dakar 2018, third place in the T1-3 category at the Dakar 2020, and having successfully completed the Dakar 2022, has stated that “behaviour and attitude account for 90% of the causes of accidents”. A study carried out by INFOVA itself found that the most common accident in Spain tends to happen close to home, on a weekday, in full visibility and on a straight stretch of road. These characteristics make clear that the issue is not “knowing how to take corners to avoid an accident, but analysing behaviours, mindsets and beliefs in order to make drivers safer”, the main focus of this driving course.

Based on three pillars

The course rests on three key pillars. The first is an online component through an interactive platform where students are trained on information such as preparing the car, configuring the mobile phone or electric cars, complemented with videos, tests and new tools.

The second part delves into the experiential side, working on mindset and on how emotions and the environment affect key decisions when sitting at the controls of a simulator.

Finally, Champions Skills for Safety works on body awareness, covering aspects such as peripheral vision and the thoughts we should and should not have when getting behind the wheel and out onto the road.

Overall, this road safety course aims to produce safer drivers, focusing on prevention and on raising awareness of the risks that surround all drivers on the road.