Teaching Young Drivers – a New Year resolution

With the beginning of every year we look to what it should bring, and Advanced-Driving.co.uk calls on the Department for Transport to set itself a determined New Year resolution to teach young drivers the safety skills they need. This is long overdue.

In 2007, novice driver safety came into sharp focus again. The Dft revealed that the driver death rate has been getting worse for some years, the Transport Select Committee published its recommendations, and the year ended with news from the Norwich Union that young driver claims have increased by a staggering 300% in the last 5 years, while claims from other drivers fell by 10%. Quite rightly, the debate throughout the year took on a renewed sense of purpose.

This sits against a backdrop of measures taken over the past 15 years specifically to reduce crash rates, including the Theory Test, Hazard Perception Test, Pass Plus, speed cameras and more. But just as 2007 showed the extent of failure, so 2008 should mark the beginning of an approach that will work.

The long-awaited consultation document due soon from the DfT is a huge opportunity. But the outcome must concentrate on the causes of high crash rates, not just the symptoms. This means teaching drivers the proper skills, rather than restricting their driving as a substitute. Improving safety skills should also be more about teaching the right things than simply changing the process of learning. The worst outcome would be further major actions that fail to improve the figures.

For this very reason, Advanced-Driving.co.uk was founded to draw attention to the direct need for a change in the way learner drivers are taught. We are totally convinced that safety must be based on teaching the proper skills. The skills developed by more experienced drivers need to be defined and adopted in methods for teaching the young.

Stephen Haley’s “Essential Thinking Skills” (see link below) is an invitation to the Driving Standards Agency to review its methods of teaching, and introduce better skills. The current L-test and levels of enforcement have failed, and restrictions should not be imposed to offset inadequate teaching.

“When will people realise that driving is not just a hands and feet exercise?”, said Darren Tipton of Advanced Driving UK. “It is fundamentally about the decisions you make based on the risks you perceive. Those decisions can mean the difference between life and death for a novice driver”. This is at the core of Mind Driving and Essential Thinking Skills.

“How well should we expect drivers to gain skills they have not been shown? Or should we be surprised that their period of discovery when they begin to drive unsupervised proves to be dangerous?” says Stephen in his Essential Thinking Skills.

Youngsters currently learn quite well how get the vehicle moving in a “point and go” fashion, but the proper beliefs and thinking are missing if we want them to negotiate our busy roads in safety.

This is what the DfT must resolve to get right in 2008.

Posted in Essential Thinking Skills, Motoring & Driving News

Essential Thinking Skills

By Stephen Haley, author of Mind Driving in association with Advanced Driving UK
Read the proposal – Essential Thinking Skills

The way people learn to drive needs “fundamental reform”.

We can be certain of this because about a year ago Dr Stephen Ladyman, as Transport Minister, was saying it in his speeches, and it has appeared in all recent Department for Transport documents on the subject.

It had also been echoing in the DfT corridors for a while too. Further evidence is in the ‘new fact’ which so plainly surprised the Transport Select Committee last March, that the novice fatality rate has been rising – even while under multiple spotlights for improvement.

In truth, we have been waiting a long time for the Government to catch up with the notion that the driver training system should focus more on safety. The vital question now is what should “fundamental reform” mean? What form should it take?

Some people suggest placing restrictions on young drivers while they gain a bit of experience. But I strongly favour teaching them to drive properly in the first place. There is enough confusion in young minds without putting trip wires across their need to grow up and join the adult world. And the claim that, “You can’t teach experience” is used as a mistaken excuse for not grasping the nettle.

Crucially, even novice drivers themselves raise concerns about the way they were taught and the ‘real driving’ they are left to discover after the test. Experienced drivers recognise what is missing as the critical ‘thinking part’ – the mental processes and careful decisions about what to do – that must take place well before the action is taken. But this is the big secret that is denied the learner.

The new driver’s initiation into driving, and the real test on pain of death, has become how well they can work out for themselves what these survival skills are.

The history of the novice problem includes the Driving Standards Agency’s firm resolve over the years that driving skill is centred on car control and regulations. Thus the strange declaration in their manual that, “Driving skill alone will not prevent accidents”.

It signals a fundamentally flawed definition of ‘skill’, that has been the most enduring hazard in itself. The right definition would let us state the precise opposite. If asked about the key skills of chess, for example, no one says moving the pieces across the squares. The expertise is of a higher order than that. And so it is with safe driving on public roads.

Essential Thinking Skills is a brief initial proposal to the DSA to see how they would take to some new ideas.

It uses examples from the Mind Driving book, because that is a stake in the ground on how thinking skills can be used in driver training. But you don’t need to have read Mind Driving to understand the proposal.

As ever, something needs to be done. The test for the DfT is whether they can see now what that is, and whether their studies and consultations can stretch to find something that will be more effective than past measures.

A sharp focus on safety by teaching new drivers some essential thinking skills would be a truly ‘fundamental’ change in driver training. And that is what they need.

Stephen Haley

Read the proposal – Essential Thinking Skills
Stephen Haley runs The Skilldriver project and is author of the book “Mind Driving”.

Posted in Essential Thinking Skills

Mind Driving is our Motoring Reference Book

In continuing its efforts to change the face of road safety in the UK, Advanced Driving UK has selected the new book “Mind Driving” by Stephen Haley as its reference source. Advanced-Driving.co.uk is the UK’s largest online Advanced Driving Community, with over 400,000 hits per month. Mind Driving is essential reading for everyone wishing to undertake further or Advanced Driver training recommended by users and contributors on the website.

The book explains that expert drivers use much more than their “hands and feet” skills. Safe driving is actually a 95% thinking task, and is about actively controlling risk. But this is not how new drivers are taught, or how many experienced motorists drive. Too many people see driving as all about car control and fast reactions, rather than the thought processes involved. Safety is ultimately in how we think behind the wheel – which comes well before the “hands and feet” take the actions. This is a radical view of driving in the UK, because major motoring organisations still concentrate on the mechanical activity inside the vehicle – more than on how to make correct decisions first about what to make the vehicle do.

Darren Tipton, Founder of Advanced Driving UK said, “Our mission from Day One has been about doing things differently to help reduce young driver casualties. Adopting Mind Driving as our reference source is a core part of moving in that direction”.

Since its launch in the House of Commons last September, the book has received some outstanding reviews in the motoring press. From now on, every new member of Advanced Driving UK has the option to receive a copy of Mind Driving as part of the package aimed at helping them improve their own driving and reduce their crash risk.

Stephen Haley, author of Mind Driving said, “For Advanced Driving UK to adopt Mind Driving is a significant step in the effort to reduce road casualties. Their rapid growth and special focus on young drivers creates an even greater opportunity to make a real difference”.

View our page on Mind Driving

Posted in Essential Thinking Skills