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news
Young driver (licensed CC BY 2.0 by State Farm on Flickr).jpgYoung drivers need to learn how to avoid collisions with vulnerable road users more quickly, says road safety charity
A road safety charity has said that young drivers need to learn how to avoid collisions with vulnerable road users more quickly.
The appeal from IAM RoadSmart followed analysis carried out in partnership with the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) into crahes involving young drivers.
Their report, called Young Novice Driver Collision Types, found that young drivers quickly picked up skills needed to avoid single-vehicle crashes.
However, they took longer to acquire others such as avoiding vulnerable road users – possibly because of poor hazard perception skills – or driving safely on motorways.
Recommendations made in the report are as follows:
Further research to understand why novice drivers are involved in and learn quickly to avoid single vehicle loss of control type crashes. This can inform the development of targeted interventions and possible training.
Consider options for reducing young driver crashes at night (eg additional experience gained during the learner phase).
The government’s plans to allow learners on motorways are fully justified by the report as it is clear new drivers are likely to benefit from practice on motorways.
Explore the role that advanced hazard perception training might offer in reducing the threat young drivers pose to Vulnerable Road Users.
Explore the apparent trend of young drivers’ vehicles being more likely to be hit from the rear. There may be practical, hazard perception or anticipation training that could be of benefit.
IAM RoadSmart Chief Executive Officer, Sarah Sillars, said: “It is really useful to learn more about how young drivers are gaining the experience they need to have a safe driving career.
“However, analysing the results, it is vital that government, road safety bodies and the driver instruction industry work together to generate new strategies to target those skills that are not being learned at the fastest rate.”
She added: “It also shows that in the formative years of driving, there is clearly a need for post-test training to continue, to build experience that can reduce the number of needless tragedies on our roads.”
The report has been discussed today on the road.cc forum, and you can find the thread here.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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17 comments
YOUNG DRIVERS NEED TO LEARN RESPECT, TO OTHERS AND SELF...
What's really needed is for there to be a driving attitudes element to the driving test.
There are unfortunately enough idiots out there who think real life driving can be like a blockbuster movie stunt scene, with no real consequences.
Witness the amount of idiots accelerating up to 40mph in a residential zone; driving around souped up motors that stink of cannabis; or swerving in and out to overtake traffic driving at the speed limit.
There are already 'show me tell me' questions on the driving test about how to check for vehicle detects etc., it's hardly a stretch to just draw up some attitudes based questions into this. Combine this with the examiner's own assessment of somebody's demeanour, and you can have a pretty cost effective way of trying to nip some of these wannabe gangster attitudes in the bud.
BBC show from a few years ago, every episode scared the shite out of me.
Barely Legal Drivers.
https://youtu.be/BRh9mH6wguY
Prior to 2017, bees and wasps killed more people in the UK than terrorists.
And praise the government for MI8, the recently reformed wasp task force, its snooping on nests and countryside and beer garden and service station safety measures - because without all that it would have been much, much worse.
The instruction/lessons are not even close enough to understanding what ones responsibilities realy are and how to drive safely and they never really have though there were some better instruction re 'wobble' room for people on bikes BITD.
Now it's aied at makung progress, how to use distracting devices in the vehicle and not even near enough emphasis on understanding you beung the hazard to others and how it's absolutely your responsibility in a killing machine to take account of minor errors by others whom if you were not in a motor vehicle would not be at thrat of harm.
Even the police are clueless far too often. Even well meanung cycle centric police still fail to grasp certain aspects that are absolutely crucial and should be part of the central thinking of all drivers and indeed all road users.
The part of the HC that is ignored the most though and should be law and a hard zero tolerance law is going at a speed you can stop well within the distance you can see to be clear.
In any otherwalk of life or industry cars and/or their operators would be banned completely as beung too lethal/dangerous yet it's an accepted norm for there to be KSIs as part of a 'normal' day. Have the same figures for so called terrorist atracks and we'd have the army on every street ready to shoot down people who looked like a threat to people's safety. Why is there this huge difference in reaction yet only one is by far the biggest killer/destroyer of lifes!!
This. Very much this.
(Compare the numbers for traffic KSI vs the numbers for terrorism KSI, and then compare actions taken by the public and the government as a consequence...).
This was drilled into me in theory and practice when I learnt to drive a car - I already had nearly 30 years of experience on motorbikes and cycles by then, but found the emphasis they sought to be useful and reasonably well directed. Things have perhaps changed and I was maybe more fortunate than some by the sound of it.
There's absolutely no training/teaching for new drivers about how to safely pass vulnerable road users, pedestrians, cyclists, horses, mobility scooters etc.
I quite clearly recall when I was learning to drive a couple years ago, my driving instructor told me specifically not to cross the dashed line in the middle of the road when overtaking cyclists in towns/cities - which was quite surprising as my instructor basically wanted me to pass within a meter and a half of vulnerable road users. As for training for how to drive around horses etc, nothing.
Obviously, it's not very easy or practical to go find a rural road with a horse/cyclist on it and teach a learner driver how to safely pass.
I guess your instructor wanted you to fail your test so s/he would get more money out of you as no examiner would think that was safe driving. It really is instructor dependant on what you get taught.
The two instructors I ended up gelling with who taught me to drive, primary concern was to produce safe observant drivers. The first one was a motorcyclist who taught a lot of people who had been banned and had to retake their tests. He had to get rid of their bad habits towards other road users. The second one made me drive around a rougher area where it seemed every other road user, regardless of type, made up the rules of the road.
I had to change instructors as the first one didn't need to work weekends and my personal circumstances changed. Funnily enough my second instructor ended up with a waiting list of pupils so didn't need to work weekends either. The bellends I got from other recommendations and well-known driving schools worked 6 days a week including weekends.
You don't need a rural road to learn how to pass horses. I was actually was brought up in London near stables - they are gone as the publican whose land they were on went bankrupt - and I now currently live near stables, so see horses on my road regularly. I was probably told and shown how to drive around horses as a kid, as I didn't live near stables when learning to drive. The road users who act poorly around them seem to be a minority of older car drivers who should know better. Everyone else whether cyclist, car driver, bus driver etc just slows down/stops and waits until the rider says it is OK for them to pass.
So hard evidence that the training and tests are not fit for purpose and indeed does not highlight even remotely enough that killing maiming a human being is a really really bad thing. So much so that even those training the next lot of killers don't give a fuck either. Quelle fucking surprise!
Need to dig it out but I'm confident in saying that the vast majority of those that kill and maim are not novice drivers, and yet TRL, IAM government police and every other ignorant to the facts organisations sit on their hands and do feck all.
Young drivers account for most collisions and possibly road deaths, if I recall correctly. I believe they are largely killing themselves and their friends. It could be insightful trying to find patterns in the data with regard to new/old drivers and KSIs caused.
If young drivers are responsible for most crashes, why does most of the threat/intimidation/danger I experience on the roads come from older drivers?
The deliberate stuff probably stems from a sense of entitlement, which is partly due to drivers convincing themselves that they are better than they actually are. They haven't had a crash or claim in n years so what they are doing has to be right... It's everyone else who's wrong.
There's scope for the Dunning-Kruger effect, but surveys self-assessing driving ability usually return something like 70% of drivers saying they're better than average. That's a huge problem in itself: the majority of drivers (beyond young noobs) convince themselves that their shit doesn't stink.
That's my main issue with reports like this continually focusing on the young. Older, more experienced drivers* will further lull themselves into a false sense of security with it - it reinforces their view that it's others at fault. But according to the surveys, as a group, they think they are better drivers than they actually are. And of course insurance groups use them to further beat the whipping boys of young, new drivers - when we should also be looking at ways to tackle the complacency of the oldies and to make them think about using the car for nipping to the corner shop.
* disclosure: driver for 24 years, still drive more miles than I make by any other mode of transport. I just accept that my own assessment of my driving ability is likely to be inaccurate.
You recall orrectly that young drivers have the biggest risk of crashes. According to DfT road crash data sis for the UK, young drivers aged 17-24 are eight times more likely to be involved in a crash than the average driver. Yes, you read that correctly, eight times. A recent study suggests that young drivers are most at risk one year after passing their test, when their overconfidence most outstrips their experience.
It is no longer allowed to separate out the figures for crashes for female and male drivers as that would be discriminatory. However it is also well known that young male drivers aged 17-24 have the highest risk of crashing of all and that they would be more than eight times more at risk of crashing than the average driver. The young male in the pimped up Corsa with a loud exhaust really is the person you need to be most careful to avoid on the road.
What makes you say that?
It is allowed. The government do it for their figures. See:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/fil...
You can't base insurance cost on gender, but there's nothing stopping anyone measuring the difference in accident statistics.
Ok, my mistake as I thought it applied to data too. Males are over-represented in crashes.
Quote road safety charity has said that young drivers need to learn how to avoid collisions with vulnerable road users more quickly. Unquote
NO SHIT! It is just a shame that so called experienced drivers also need to learn how to avoid collisions with vulnerable road users. I have been nearly knocked off twice in recent weeks by drivers under the instruction from professional driving schools. The "professional" instructor either did not notice the near collision or did not care. One was a near head on in a residential street where I had right of way. You can't teach people to read and write if you are illiterate yourself!
Yeah, I've had a few close passes and other dodgy manoeuvres from learner cars in recent years, often with a single occupant who is presumably the instructor. Some of them are passing on bad habits.
Nowadays instructors have exploitative "self-employed" contracts and make a pittance, it's a rubbish job. Pay peanuts...