The AA is again calling for driving education to be part of the National Curriculum, at a Conservative Party conference fringe meeting, on Monday 8 October.
Simon Douglas, director of AA Insurance, believes that that driving and road safety education from an early age could help to cut the shocking toll that driving brings on young lives.
The meeting, sponsored by the Association of British Insurers, followed the publication last week of the Association of British Insurers’ (ABI) report ‘Improving the safety of young drivers‘ which presented a range of proposals to reduce the shocking toll on young lives in car crashes.
The AA’s Charitable Trust also published a report in July: ‘Young Drivers at Risk‘ as part of the ‘Make Roads Safe’ campaign for global road safety.
Speaking before the meeting, Simon Douglas said: “The AA shares the ABI’s concern about the distressing young driver accident statistics.”
But he believes that many of the proposals from the ABI treat the symptoms, rather than the cause, of young driver casualties.
While supporting the concept of reducing the learning age to 16½ and extending the earliest age of passing a driving test to 17½. “This could be coupled with a logbook system to ensure that young drivers have been adequately trained,” he said.
But he said that while a minimum learning period would permit people to learn for longer, it wouldn’t necessarily happen. “It may simply lead to people getting licences at a younger age but wouldn’t stop them later ‘cramming’ to pass their test, which would be difficult to police.
“This also needs to be considered very carefully in terms of the impact on wider youth issues such as high unemployment.
“Should a 21-year-old graduate be forced to reject a job offer because they need to drive to their place of work and are not allowed to try to pass their test within a few months?”
Mr Douglas also questions the reduction in the alcohol limit for young drivers. “What kind of message does this send? That young drivers shouldn’t drink but it’s OK when they’re older?
“It would be far better to bring down the blood-alcohol limit from 80mg per 100ml of blood, which is the highest in Europe, to 50mg per 100ml of blood for everyone. That would bring the UK in line with most EU countries.
Mr Douglas believes that the best way of bringing down the death and injury rate among young drivers and make Britain’s roads safer for all is to start with education.
“This must start at a young age – many years before someone is old enough to even think about driving.
“I urge the Government to make road safety and driving science part of the national curriculum.
“It’s hard to think of a measure that would have a more profound effect on reducing the risk to young peoples’ lives. We owe it to our children to act now,” he added, pointing to statistics from the Under-17 Car Club which shows that young people who have passed their driving test following training during their early teens are half as likely to have a crash as those who learned to drive after their 17th birthday.
Mr Douglas also says that telematic or ‘pay how you drive’ insurance can play a significant role in helping to reduce young driver casualties, although he stopped short of calling for it to be made compulsory for young drivers.
“Systems such as AA Drivesafe insurance provide an accurate risk analysis by measuring driver behaviour such as speed, braking, cornering and night driving.
“Young people who demonstrate a responsible driving style can not only reduce their insurance premium by as much as 50% in one year, including no-claim discount, but are at least a third less likely to have a crash.
“Careful drivers using these systems save money as well as potentially save lives.”
