About this Service

The DGS University (DGSU) offers an online Defensive Driver Training course to State employees. The course is approximately an hour long.

This course offers essential education on your vehicle, safe driving practices, how to navigate unfavorable road conditions, and preparing for accidents should they occur. Additionally, this course reviews proper State of California procedures on reporting vehicle accidents and requesting to drive a personal vehicle on official state business. Upon completion of this course, the training will be recorded to your transcript and a certificate will be available for download.  

Course enrollments are now submitted via DGS' Learning Management System, Pathways

After creating an account, please allow 20 minutes to receive access to Pathways and for courses to appear.

Frequently Asked Questions

There is no individual charge for employees to take the training. Departments are billed an annual assessment to recover costs associated with the Defensive Driver Program.

Please ensure the following when taking the course: 

Did you minimize the training window by mistake and re-launch the module? Sometimes, when you click on links within the module, it may minimize your main window. To ensure that your progress is saved during training, avoid re-launching the course. Re-launching the course can cause two training windows to be open simultaneously, which will prevent the course from being marked as complete.

Pop-up Blockers: We recommend that you disable all content blockers for the best experience. 

Strong Network: The best precautionary tool is to make sure you're connected to a strong network. If you believe your connection is poor or you're accessing a course using a public WIFI, it might be better to hold off and access the content later and from a better network. It may also be worthwhile to use an ethernet cable instead of WIFI, if available. 

Web Browser is Current: This training supports the current version, plus one version back.  

VPN: Virtual proxy networks can sometimes cause progress issues if they have limiting features. Sometimes a VPN will limit certain communications, like specific Flash ports that will cause progress not to save. If you're accessing the course from a personal VPN, try disconnecting it to see if progress can track without it. On the other hand, if you're accessing the course from your company's VPN (which may be necessary to access your training) we recommend checking with your IT department to see if their virtual network allows unhindered access to our content. 

Thin Client: A thin client is a desktop environment that communicates with another system through a network. These technologies are discouraged by Skillsoft because they are highly customizable, and so, what may work with one environment may not in another. We suggest accessing our content without the use of a thin client to ensure progress is tracked properly. 

No Mobile Devices: We do not recommend complete this training on a mobile device as it will not save progress. Please ensure to complete on your computer. 

Defensive Driver Training is only available to state employees.

Yes, you must create a Pathways account to access the training. Please see the How to Create a New Pathways Account information guide for step by step instructions.

Please see the Resetting Your Password information guide for step by step instructions. 

Your username is your email address. If you do not have a username then you will need to create a Pathways account. Please see the How to Create a New Pathways Account information guide for step by step instructions. 

Please ensure you entered the correct username and password. Your username is your email address. The password field is case sensitive. If you do not remember your password, then click on the Forgot Password button. If you are still experiencing log in issues, please contact DGSUniversity@dgs.ca.gov.
Please check to see if you received an email from Noreplypathways@dgs.ca.gov. Please ensure to also check your Spam or Junk folders. If you did not receive an email, you may have entered your username incorrectly or you may not have created a Pathways account. 
Our previous version of Defensive Driver Training did not track completion of the course therefore we do not have any records that we can send to you. We recently released a revised training that has been placed within DGS' Learning Management System, Pathways that does maintain record of the individual's certificate of completion.

Resources

Contact

Defensive Driver Training Coordinator

DGS University
Department of General Services



Email: DGSUniversity@dgs.ca.gov

PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION.