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.