Owner of Kentville’s Bolland Driving Solutions works to promote safety
Attitude is perhaps your most important attribute when it comes to safe driving.
That is the message from Eric Bolland of Kentville, owner of Bolland Driving Solutions, who has a combined two decades of experience teaching people how to stay safe behind the wheel.
Bolland said he previously owned Precision Driving Schools, which he started in 1993 and sold in 2003. He enjoyed the driving training business and realized he missed it, so he started Bolland Driving Solutions about 10 years ago. He also enjoys being self-employed.
Bolland said they offer a unique, diversified program, including classroom training, in-car driving instruction and a virtual reality distracted and impaired driving simulator. It features video clips of the RCMP talking about these issues. As part of their package, as an option, people can receive a standard shift lesson in the school’s six-speed vehicle.
Bolland is an agent for Virtual Driver Interactive simulation trainers for eastern Canada and has sold the systems to the Newfoundland and Toronto police departments, Nova Scotia Power and other organizations. Time on the simulator is included in training they give to young drivers.
“We educate them the best that we can with our simulator and in the classroom to let them realize the down side to distracted driving,” Bolland said.
He said one of the biggest issues he recognizes, especially for young people, is the element of distracted driving resulting from social pressure to constantly be in contact with others in their peer group via cell phones. This can also be an issue with corporate drivers who have to stay connected for employment purposes.
Students aren’t allowed to have their cell phones on when receiving instruction in one of the school’s vehicles but this can become an issue later on. Bolland said distracted driving is as much of an issue today as driving impaired by drugs or alcohol.
Most of their clients are high school students but they also teach a lot of international post-secondary students and new immigrants to Canada how to drive. During the COVID-19 lockdown, they were offering discounts to frontline workers and their children.
Bolland said they are doing an increased number of assessments for drivers who may have had health issues, for example. They’re also delivering more defensive driving courses so people can get points removed from their driving records, whether this was the result of distracted driving, stress behind the wheel or road rage.
“Hopefully that trend will drop, but I’ve been told by people in law enforcement that there are more issues over the last six months compared to a year ago with stress behind the wheel and distracted driving because of COVID,” Bolland said. “Take a deep breath, relax and set a bigger following distance.”
He said they enjoy seeing the progression of taking someone from basic parking lot driving skills to actually getting them out on the highway and taking them driving in Halifax. Bolland said this is very rewarding. Being in the business as long as he has, Bolland is now teaching the children of some of his past students how to drive.
He said the school has a solid reputation that they work hard to maintain and they’ve garnered a wide range of endorsements and testimonials from satisfied clients across Kings and Hants counties.
Bolland, who was elected to four terms as a Kentville town councillor beginning in 2005 and served as the town’s deputy mayor for a year, decided not to reoffer in the October election.
Bolland plans to spend more quality time with family and friends and to devote more time and mental energy to his business now that his council commitments have concluded. Bolland hasn’t ruled out another run for public office in the future.
Bolland Driving Solutions is located in the Access Nova Scotia building on Park Street in Kentville. For more information, visit www.bollanddrivingsolutions.ca, email eric@bollanddriving.ca or call 902-679-1555. They are also on Facebook and YouTube.
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