Safe Speed Forums

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5359426.stm

Drivers 'need a year of lessons'

Learner drivers should take lessons for a minimum of 12 months according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI).

The plans are backed by motoring and safety groups, such as the RAC Foundation, which said they would lead to 1,000 fewer road casualties a year.

The proposals are intended to reduce the high numbers of young drivers killed or injured on Britain's roads.

But the Department of Transport said it wanted to influence new drivers with incentives instead of regulation.

The plans were announced at a motoring conference organised by the ABI.

Stephen Haddril, director general of the ABI, said: "Every day, four people are killed or seriously injured in crashes involving young drivers.

'Getting worse'

"The trend is getting worse not better.

"We urge the government to adopt these proposals to improve safety on our roads and reduce this tragic loss of life."

Other measures suggested include limiting the number of passengers carried by young drivers during their first few months on the road, and getting learners to record their hours and performance in a logbook.

A Department for Transport spokesman said the government treated the safety of newly qualified and young drivers very seriously.

"The driving test has been considerably strengthened in recent years and is one of the most demanding in the world.

"It takes longer to qualify for a driving licence than it used to.

"Candidates receive more professional training leading up to the test than ever before."

Robert Gifford, of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, which supports the ABI proposals, said too many young drivers were still killed or injured, despite some progress being made.

He said: "The proposals outlined here offer a way forward for this apparently intractable problem.

"I hope that the government will give them the serious consideration they deserve."

The road safety groups Brake, Roadsafe and the Make Roads Safe Campaign also backed the plans.

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Safe Speed issued the following PR at 06:04 this morning:

PR358: 'Year of lessons' proposal misses the point

news: for immediate release

According to the Association of British Insurers (ABI), new drivers 'need a
year of lessons' the BBC reports.

Safe Speed agrees that driver skill is absolutely key to road safety, and
higher standards of initial training would lead to improvements, But the 'year
of lessons' proposal will not deliver the greatest benefit for least cost and
rather misses the point.

The problem is that key driving skills such as observation and anticipation are
learned by experience rather than taught. This leads to an opportunity to
improve road safety through influencing the quality of experience rather than
extending formal training.

The quality of experience comes from information and beliefs and these in turn
come from cultural influences. In industrial health and safety, cultural
factors are seen as key to delivering safe practices. This opportunity has so
far been completely missed in road safety and indeed, modern policy actually
provides a strong negative cultural influence. (In essence, modern policy
focuses minds on legal compliance rather than safe behaviours.)

Stephen Haley's new book 'MIND DRIVING' (published yesterday) makes it crystal
clear that 'driving lesson skills' are not the same skills that actually keep
us safe.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Everyone agrees that better drivers would make
our roads safer. But new driver crash risks are more associated with lack of
experience rather than lack of training. Simply upping the training cannot even
begin to make up for the lack of experience. Instead we need to provide 'key
support' for drivers in the process of gaining experience."

"We should also be concerned that proposals which delay the availability of a
full driving licence will lead directly to an increase in dangerous unlicenced
driving."

"The false and oversimplified road safety messages that come with speed cameras
have done great damage to the process of becoming experienced. Society is
telling them to invest substantial effort in remaining legal rather than
becoming safe. Speed cameras have broken the essential link between legality
and safety."

"Further driver training is best delivered after a few years' of experience. It
is only then that the finer points make proper sense by fitting into a
framework of experience. It is no accident that Institute of Advanced Motorists
(IAM) training normally fits this pattern."

<ends>

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

Unless students are happy to shell out for hundreds of lessons, they will have forgotten what was learnt in the previous lesson when taking the next. The way around that is to have one lesson at the start of the 12 month period, then have the block of lessons in the months approaching the test – almost like what is done anyway, so what's the point?


What does an insurance company have to gain from broadcasting statements like that?

edit: apart from the publicity

Just heard it on Radio 4. Was very pleased to see no mention of cameras or, indeed, lower speed limits / more enforcement. The whole emphasis seemed to be on education rather than legislation. In fact, I think the penny might be about to drop!!!!! Maybe the doomsday clock needs to be moved to 1 day?

Agree about mandatory 12 months. It takes no account of different rates of learning and will just cost a lot of money and put people's backs up. In fact, if they were going to specify a time limit anyway, they should specify a number of hours tuition! 12 months isn't going to help much if the person only has 2 lessons!

Do we have any figures to show how motorbike accidents were affected when they imposed a power restriction on people driving big bikes until they'd got more experience / lessons? If that really worked, (and I appreciate the statistics will be hard to sift through for the facts) then maybe restricting the power of the car for a period wouldn't be a bad idea? Also a 2-stage test whereby passing the first stage lets you drive between certain hours and a car of a certain power (or better, power : weight ratio) and the second stage (perhaps with a minimum number of miles / hours / years between being able to take each stage) allowing you to drive faster stuff might be a good idea?

A big step forward,

I have concerns such as a blanket 1 year regradless of progress but there definately needs to be a far more structured approach tolearning to drive.

Personally I would strt much earlier in schools, introducing the concept of risk identification and mitigation in all aspects of life as a theme within the national curriculum.

Then road safety _ Highway code etc as part of the 'personal development' lessons that all schools must teach.

For all the good intentions of this idea I don't support the concept of just landing the bill for this 1 year bill on these young people.

In a word many can't afford it on their own. A lot of the time its parents who float the cost for the child now.

I paid for all my own lessons since I had a part time job during university but one year is a long time when you also have studies to do.

I needed my car for example for my placement year in third year. If your talking about a whole year I'd certianly want the criteria of passing the test to change, perhaps by staggering it over the year.

Hmmm. Not convinced at all that a time frame is of any use at all.

No other license training works like that - why should driving?

Pilots must fly a number of hours within a time period - not over a minimum time period.

That said I had 6 hours of lessons, decided they were crap and drove around on L-plates in parent's car for another 6 months before I took my test. To that end I'd question the value on driving lessons at all. Sure, they have their place and are great for teaching a beginner how to make a vehicle perform it's basic functions. Beyond this??? I doubt I learned anything from my driving instructor once I'd picked up all the hand and foot work.


Infact - I remember on several occassions disagreeing openly with him. I told him I wasn't going to hold the car on the clutch at junctions, and taking my foot off and reapplying the brake was of no use at all in his car, which had ABS. I think he cancelled my lessons looking back

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Do you know this idea may have some merit but not in it's current form. I would feel more comfortable supporting it if kids were allowed to start this driver training at 16.

"Early training" would thus focus on machine control and be carried out at dedicated learning centres with a number of key skills being acheived before the 16 year old is allowed on the roads.

Only qualified instructors in approved and licenced vehicles would be allowed to conduct the training and the driving test would not be allowed to be taken before the age of 17.

The training should not be compulsory but this would give us the opportunity give a far better chance to those kids who do take the training as they can get the "control" part of driving out of the way and focus in the later stages on skills, experience and observation.

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Former Military Police Officer and accident investigator

That would be useful Patch.

It may possibly wear off some of the bravado that comes along with anyone's new found ability to operate something.

Perhaps the emphasis could be focused on driver psychology in preparation for the license once the novelty of playing with a new toy had worn off.


I do believe that any required minimums should be instructional hours based and not based on a minimum time frame. I would strongly suspect that people would tend to spread lessons out rather than intensifying training. To my mind, this reduces the value of instruction.

I do think that the curriculum taught by instructors needs to be changed to go beyond manouvers of somewhat limited use, to address many of the issues which actually cause bad driving.

Lessons and training into how to recognise your own aggression building etc would definately be of help. How to recognise peer pressure etc etc. This would need to be taught first hand, in a stressful environment, rather than some lame lipservice from a book everyone ignores.

Driving a coned obstacle course with instructor yelling and mates in the back laughing would be a good start. The student would eventually climb out at the end and recognise "Yes - I was getting seriously wound up there".

Far better in a controlled training environment than a public road I should think

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I'm not sure if this is a good idea to be honest. I definately think that pass plus should be compulsory though. Also limiting passengers is not a good idea - it is only good for those young drivers who are tempted to show off, which doesn't really make up the majority of all young drivers.

This may sound like a daft question but has anyone thought about the possiblity of not having driving tests and only letting your driving instructor issue you a full licence when he/she feels that you're ready? It could take away that luck/excess nerves issue when it comes to tests which doesn't really say how good a driver you are at other times.

I actually think that anyone is susceptable to peer pressure, not just those inclined to show off. I think the vulnerability is especially acute in teenagers who are, outwith driving, usually struggling to conform to some identity model or another.

What about if the inexperienced drivers were passenger limited unless the front seat passenger was over 21 and held a full license for over 3 years similar to the requirements on those who can accompany learner drivers?

That was the young'un could benefit from experience driving on family trips etc without being illegal, yet would limit the ability of passengers to (either knowingly or unintentionally) pressure the driver into doing something either beyond the car's limits or his own (probably both).

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That'll be a first!!!

Obviously a misquote.

Or maybe they are finally waking up? After all you can't just sleep forever...

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

I'll book my son in for twelve months of lessons:

- one in January to learn winter driving,
- one in June as the tourists come out, to learn to react to lunatics,
- one in October to paractice skidding on wet leaves, and finally
- a quick top up in between Christmas and New Year, rather than sit in front of the telly the whole holiday!

It's not how long you learn for, it WHAT you learn, and ENSURING everyone has learned up to a better standard than now which is important.

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

The new drivers with the best accident record are those that don't pass first time. Either the extra lessons helped or the extra humility coming from failing on the first go does or both. Who knows! I know I passed second time and still when out on the roads in the first year or so I was fairly terrible. I didn't do a great mileage and didn't want to as I found it difficult to be driving on my own without the support of an extra pair of eyes. I did display P plates and they actually helped! They were stolen and I remember the difference in attitude of other drivers changed instantly. I was tailgated immediately and generally pushed around.

This was a few years ago and everything has changed. Driving standards are much worse and people are much more aggressive and impatient. Worse thing is that I too have become much less patient and generally fed up with everyone that is not at least doing a reasonable speed or that dithers. I am slowly turning into my dad

I learnt some 20 years ago and did what patch was proposing.

bought a course of leasons, started with learning cars checks and topups and then drove around a disused helliport in southampton, after an hour or two three students were driving ourselves around the helliport. then shared leasons observing each others driving errors, and about 10 hours on ther road with an instructor and quite a few hours out with dad in the mk 2 cortina.

It worked - I haven't killed my self (or any one else)

All that took about 4 months. 12 months is way too long. I would agree with the pilot training. x number of hours training in x months. but young drivers learn very very fast. It is the over confidence, attitude and drink that is the problem. I dont know how you kerb that without putting in mind control chips!

In the post office telephones people had a week long course and passed thier test and had large vehicle training to a 2 ton bedford.

These proposals also have huge implications for industry and the armed forces.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

I've passed so pull up the drawbridge!!

Seriously I think the test should be more rigorous, possibly with a number of practical test spaced a number of weeks apart in different conditions. Maybe two tests before 'passing' then another one after year 1? the intervening period you would hold a probationary licence.....i don't necessarily see the need for restrictions however, you would know that you had to pass the full test at the end of the year or start the whole process again. This would encourage 'pass plus' type lessons.

Also, the theory test should be something worthwhile and not a multiple choice touch screen affair. And should be repeated at the end of year 1 test.

Any thoughts?

if they wish to impose a 12month limit before taking a driving test why not take a leaf from the motorbike tests and introduce a CBT for Cars? a couple of hours learning the basics of control and the rules of the road then after that it is upto you whether you see an instructor again

That is the system used in Southern Ireland. (or was 5 years ago!)
drive for three years with a qualified driver (if you could be bothered) If tou hadnt passed your test within 3 years they gave you a full liscence any way.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

I passed my test in 3 months and 3 days, and, it may sound as if I'm blowing my own trumpet, but I think I'm a much better driver than some idiots on the road. I use indicators sparingly, I have good lane discipline, I anticipate my route, I get in the right lane, etc... Even on roundabouts with clear signage and spiral markings directing traffic which lane they should use you still get idiots who get in the wrong lane, carve you up without indicating, and then wonder what your problem is when you beep your horn.

I am yet to have an accident of any kind. The whole thing is a nanny state tactic and won't cut the mustard.

I can tell you for a fact that one major aggregator (who I would prefer not to name) has included the following question as part of their online quotation procedure:

"Have you passed your Pass Plus test"?

http://www.passplus.org.uk/about_pp.asp

The same site also asks how many children live at the address, and whether you own your home. It's interesting what some underwriters consider to be relevant information. (These are known in the trade as "dynamic underwriter questions" or DUQs.)

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Brian