Safe Speed Forums

This morning on BBC local radio, a mother of a girl killled in October when the car she was a passenger in left the road, was calling for restrictions on young drivers, to safeguard them, their passengers, and to spare the relatives the agony of a lost child.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/5348124.stm


While some of the measures she calls for might seem a bit drastic, high profile accidents involving teenagers in Cumbria at least, HAVE taken place at nights - often in the small hours of the morning.
However, I am tempted to say that as a parent, I would not have allowed them out at that time - but even that is not always easy to enforce when children stretch the truth by claiming to be staying at a friends, or similar.

The article reported above varies from the broadcast piece, for instance in that line regarding driving bigger cars, she equated graduated engine sizes with motorcycle use - correctly identifying a difference between motorcycle training and permissions, to "one size fits all" car tests.
New Zealand has curfews on young drivers. Does anyone know if it works, and if any country has limits on engine capacity/power along the lines suggested?

Is it perhaps time for "Pass Plus" training to become compulsory as part of the present test, and to adopt the "Probationer" driver plate with restrictions common in some other European countries, AND Northern Ireland?

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I agree that some form of restriction wouldn't be a bad idea but it can't be done on engine size. My old 3 litre Scimitar would have been classed as a "high capacity" car (and indeed, it was expensive to insure!) but it was pretty slow - my wife's 1.4 Metro would give it a run for its money! On the other hand, there are plenty of cars with much smaller engines that go like stink! Perhaps restricting kids to certain insurance groups might be feasible but then the insurers (effectively) seem to do that anyway!

Be interesting to see if the problems with newbies has any relationship to the decline of mobile police resources - certainly the "P" plate would help, but we desperately need trafpol in their old role - enforcing and educating - 25 mins with a trafplod would help a newby driver become a lot safer than many a training course - trafpol has seen his errors , sees him as a new driver and has the authority and knowledge to help- and once newby has been stopped, read the sermon ,he won't want it again.
I know from personal experience - never got stopped, but had trafpols i could ask for advice --the dedicated ones were only too keen to help.

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

No amount of education will make a careless person care (such accidents may not be down to lack of skill).

IMO new drivers need to be shown the risks and consequences in a hard hitting manner, this hopefully resulting with an attitude correction for those who think they are God’s gift!

[quote="smeggy).

IMO new drivers need to be shown the risks and consequences in a hard hitting manner, this hopefully resulting with an attitude correction for those who think they are God’s gift![/quote]


Before PC Gatso , we had PC Trafpol - complete with acid lectures - a good right boot and the attitude to hand out "attitude correction" - it worked - a return to those days might see trends reversing. Trouble Tony and Gordy only see things as per the budget sheet .

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Mostly it is lack of COAST skills.



AND they need to have the nature of their responsibilities explained.

AND when we have finally unravelled (as a society) just what driving skills are, THEN young people won't feel they have to pretend that they have them when they don't.

Imagine 17 year old John. He's seen his father drive in a state of relaxed concentration. He's seen him drive with a light touch and little seems to happen. One the face of it John has the same skills, after all he can change gear perfectly. It's just that 'things' seem to happen when John drives. The 'things' make John nervous, but peer pressure prevents him from admitting it or adjusting his style. No one has told him that he can't be expected to function as an experienced driver. No one has told him that subtle mental skills need to be nurtured and developed. No one has given him an excuse for his failures. As far as John knows - secretly - he isn't a very good driver. He's not about to admit it or show weakness...

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

My point being: a person with no skill is equally as dangerous as a person who has all the skill in the world but chooses to not apply them.

Is this the essence of careless driving? After all, we all must have been judged to be appropriately skilled enough in order to gain our driving licenses. Can those skills simply evaporate?

I'll stand by 'mostly' I believe the group you are thinking of have an 'attitude shortfall'. Attitude shortfalls are less common than skills shortfalls, but one or other lies at the root of almost all crashes.



Nah. I don't think that's right at all. In practice careless driving IS a skills shortfall - the the skills that fall sort are usually concentration, anticipation or observation. Anyone can have a 'lapse' in these areas. Better drivers have fewer lapses. Experts have almost none.

Or perhaps we're working with different definitions of 'careless'?

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

If you resistrict young drivers, how do they build up the skills needed to drive safely in the future?

Some people can go though all thier driving lessons and never drive at night, or in adverse condtions.

I suppose I was lucky, my dad was a miltary driving instructor at some stage in his career. When he taguht me the basics, we went out in the dark, when the rain was coming down so hard ,noah would been consdering rebuilding the ark. He taught what I needed to do to drive safley.

Also I suppose I it is lucky that my parents have always drove long distances.(ie germany to chesterfield).So I have lots of time to wtach my parents drive, and learn from them.

In the last 26 years (as long as I have been alive) my pearents have had only one crash, and that was into each other .

Education of young drivers does not come from just lessons, it comes from people around you.

_________________
Oct 11 Birmingham Half Marathon. I am running for the British Heart Foundation.
http://www.justgiving.com/Rob-Taylor

I wonder just how many of us make use of such opportunities? I was lucky to sit next to several ex Class 1 police drivers as part of my part-time employment as a schoolboy/student. It worked wonders.

I dont know if you all experience the same thing - TWOCing is uncommon in my area for instance, but I see this as a two fold problem.

Bad attitude among SOME younger drivers, coupled with a driving test which fails to show up shortcomings, and does not require a degree of training to cope with modern lifestyle - commuting on motorways and towns.

Does anyone know of a driving instructor, who says "Slow down, let a gap form in front of you to allow that car out of that side street, who has been waiting some time."?
No, they just want to get you through the test - that is how they measure their success. BSM use their success in their adverts, not the fact they turn out polite and considerate drivers.

The mother in the original article has highlighted an issue - young drivers out at night - possibly transporting a number of friends home from a night out - and coming to grief because of bad judgement, and lack of experience.
Just how much difference does it make having 5 up in an Escort/Corsa instead of just you and a friend in the front seat?
What if it's not a newer car, and is several years old?
Why not test them on a track, with a real load up, and see if they cope? It would be good for them, and good for other road users!

Does insurance cost really deter them? Often they will be on a parents insurance, or the cheapest option, and many of them earn enough to pay their way!
Finally, how many people here would actually PASS a test if made to re-sit it, with no further training? Would we have to learn to LOOK at the mirror, instead of glancing at it? I suspect we would. As experienced drivers, we would have to exaggerate our everyday skills, in order to impress the examiner that we actually carried them out, because they become more subtle with experience. Is that a failing in the system of testing?

The motorcycle test is becoming more like the sort of testing I feel we should have for car drivers - not allowed to progress from one level, until you have completed the first.


More expensive? More difficult to administer? You bet, but we need to do SOMETHING to improve standards... is this the first step?

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I think if we could see genuine statistics, then this may point the way to any changes that need to be made. The problem is that in common with all other statistics we are presented with - we can't believe them because we know that 99% of the time they're "tinkered with" so that government can get away with what they want. Even when the stats are genuine, we have developed such a lack of trust of "the powers that be", that we look for the catch.

That said, I don't think that youngsters (or any new driver) go out on the road equiped with all the skills that they need, and the biggest one is fear.

I have 2 teenagers, one has been driving for 2 years (and is a very good technical driver). The other is learning just now. So I'm able to observe this first hand.

The one that's been driving for a while thinks he knows it all. Now, I know that there are situations that scare the living daylights out of me - the one that comes to mind is a busy fast moving M1. I avoid that road whenever possible, but when I do have to go on it I'm constantly thinking "what if...". I don't believe new drivers think like that - because they haven't had the time to learn about the "when things go wrong" situations.

So I guess I would be in agreement with an extra step between "passed test" and "full" driving entitlements - but as I said at the start, without seeing proper statistics, I don't know what that step should involve.

_________________
Wake me up when the revolution starts
STOP the Toll Tax http://www.traveltax.org.uk

When I left school at 16 I was biking to work. My day started between 5am and 8am and finished between 5 and 10pm depending on the season and an early start of meant a late finish. The whole point in having a car is having the freedom to go when ever you please. Would I have had to bike to work, or is going to work ok? Teenagers arn't responsible (you've got you're whole life left for worrying), all people can do is give guidence and hope they make the right choices.

We do have a graduated system to stop people from driving fast cars early on, it's the high insurance premiums and the people that don't bother with insurance arn't be going to be particularly worried about driving tests are they?

Parents spend the first 17 years wishing the kids would leave home and get out of their hair, then when they get wheels and independence, they want them to stay at home all night

I think the point is though that few parents who own nice cars are going to buy a small slow car when their child passes his/her test. I think it's far more likely that those parents would simply "take the hit" and cough up for the child to be added as a named driver.

Even those kids who do buy their own cars - most of them are insured in their parents' names.

Insurance costs don't reflect income either. Rich fishermen in coastal towns near me had a reputation for killing children in the 80's and 90's by handing them BMWs and the like. Sometimes they'd survive all day long

There's a 17 year old who's just joined the owners club I belong to. His parents have given him their blessings on a 2.5 V6 for his first car. In the wider scheme of things, the V6 Cougar isn't a fast car, but it is perfectly capable of completely overwhelming a 17 y/o. But, he lives in London, daddy has a Porsche and mummy has a Merc. They're happy to pay the £2,800 insurance premium.

Would anyone like to put a life expectancy on this lad?


I think a gradiated test scheme would be a positive movement towards road safety and I fully agree that society must treat unskilled drivers in a more positive manner, so that kids who either lack the technical skills, or just wonder why bad things seem to happen to them, don't feel embarrassed to seek additional training.

_________________

...or his passengers or other road users.

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

CULTURAL INFLUENCE

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Insurance cost certainly deterred me. I learnt to drive in a <1 year old Nissan Micra with ABS and so on, but when looking for cars it was far cheaper to insure a much older car. Ended up with a 12 year old Ford Escort that was running skinnier tyres, no PAS and no ABS.

I had never been taught how to cadence brake and wasn't even aware that such a technique existed, it was a bit of a shock the first time a Mondeo did an emergency stop in front of me. I knew the Escort's brakes were crap but didn't realise quite how bad until then. Didn't hit it but did a huge skid on a gravelley road to finish up about 8 inches off it's bumper. Good job I wasn't tailgating or expecting the car to stop more like the Micra I learned in.

OTOH, I liked not having PAS. It stopped my mum from borrowing my car.

Your account strengthens the call for improved training - you clearly were not prepared for the vehicles shortcomings, and driving on the road!
A lot of drivers dont know they are unprepared - which makes them a liability to themselves, and other road users. Insurance companies recognise these risks - and price accordingly.

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Perhaps, if we started to train people to drive, instead of training them to pass the test, maybe that would make some difference.
I have some knowledge of the German driver training.
They have to complete courses in First Aid, basic car maintenance, road law.
Dotted all round Germany are Verkehrubungsplatz (Driver Training area), where young people from the age of 14 are allowed to drive on the enclosed circuit. The circuit consists of a real lifelike road infrastructure including traffic lights and even a roundabout, they have laybys with stacks of tyres to simulate parked cars, to practise parallel parking, a little humpbacked bridge and so on.
At the time I was out there, it cost 5Dmarks for insurance for the day, and 4Dmarls an hour for use of the area.
The driving schools also used this area to teach emergency braking both in the dry and wet, and also the use of cadence braking, this was before the mass introduction of ABS, and they could have just half of the road surface wet and the other half dry.
The Polizei also used to visit.
Unfortunately, this would be considered far too expensive to provide by this inept government, and could possibly do some good for road safety, so thats a non starter then isn't it.

_________________
Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

My first year's insurance for a Ka was £2 600.

After experiencing 10 months of driving with R plates now, I can say they are a fairly good idea... The only places they aren't really appropriate are on the motorway and on fast dual carriageways... If I'm being honest I'll drive slower on a motorway than I would on a side road, because there's a greater density of traffic police on the motorway than the side road... I'll stick ridgidly to 50mph on a motorway, where on a side road I'll be more inclined (especially when its quiet) to go a wee bit faster, usually crusing at about 60 when it's safe to do so... I think the 1 year probationary period is a bit long, especially if you're restricted for that whole year... And a problem is that someone can pass their test, and not drive for that year, although they'll be that little bit older and probably more sensible - more aware of how delicate their life actually is... And then you get someone like me who has driven basically every day within that year, with a few different road conditions, and not always driving the same route... The thing that bugs me is that I am subject to the same restrictions as someone who passed their test at 12 noon today... Maybe the mileage of the driver should be taken into consideration...

Something else that is different over here is the fact that our learners are restricted to 45mph, so our learners haven't been trained at 60/70 mph, we're just left to our own devices to work this out...

I definitely think that a compulsory P plate or similar would be a good idea, maybe not with restrictions on speed, but perhaps preventing them from driving late at night, although I find that quite discriminatory, as I tend to be a lot more aware of my speed at night time, probably due to the fact that we have quite a few traffic police around here... Also when it's quiet I'm less concerned about holding people up, so I'll take my time, so although it is probably safer to go faster, I don't...

Something to back up the night restrictions would be that the majority of accidents involving young drivers, particulary serious accidents, happen at night... (or in my opinion that seems to be the case)

_________________
Mike