Brake’s response to the Driving Standards Agency’s consultation on learning to drive

October 2008

For all queries, please contact: Cathy Keeler, Deputy Chief Executive

tel: 01484 559909, email:

About Brake
Brake is a national road safety charity, dedicated to stopping deaths and injuries on roads and caring for people bereaved and affected by road crashes.

Brake carries out research into road users’ attitudes on a range of road safety issues, including aspects of learning to drive;training and testing; driver attitudes and behaviour;traffic law and its enforcement; and charges and penalties for traffic offences.

Through the ‘graduates’ of its RoadSafetyAcademy, Brake delivers road safety education to thousands of young people each year. This allows the organisation to collate information on the attitudes and self-reported behaviour of young passengers and drivers.

Background to Brake’s consultation response

Brake’s policy recommendations on the issue of learning to drive have been developed in the light of information on best practice, gathered through a number of forums.

  1. Brake played an active part in a discussion group convened by the Association of British Insurers (ABI) in 2006, which led to the publication of a report[1] endorsed by the ABI, Brake, the Make Roads Safe Campaign, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, the RAC Foundation and RoadSafe. As a minimum, the report called for Government action to:
  2. set a 12-month minimum learning period before the driving test;
  3. implement a structured learning programme for all new drivers, covering the different road and traffic conditions learner drivers should experience before taking the test;
  4. encourage young drivers to carry fewer passengers;
  5. encourage young drivers to avoid driving at night.
  1. Brake encouraged public debate on the topic of young drivers and learning to drive through Road Safety Week 2006, which took young driversafety as the national theme for the Week.
  1. Brake has been gathering evidence on young people’s attitudes and behaviour as drivers and passengers with other young drivers since April 2004, when it established a young driver education scheme in London, the pre-cursor to the current Young Driver module of its RoadSafetyAcademy, sponsored by FedEx Express. Evidence about attitudes and behaviour is gathered prior to the education session being delivered by a Brake volunteer and analyses to date have revealed alarming levels of risk-taking among young drivers.[2][3]
  1. Brake organised two international road safety conferences to disseminate information on best practice policies and education of young drivers in May 2007 and January 2008, involving academic and government speakers from a range of countries which have successfully managed to reduce numbers of young driver and passenger casualties.[4]
  1. Brake provided written and oral evidence to Parliament’s Transport Select Committee inquiry on novice drivers in 2006.

Summary of Brake recommendations for Government action

To tackle the high levels of young driver and passenger casualties and the numbers of fatal and serious injury crashes involving younger, more inexperienced drivers, Brake recommends the following urgent action by Government to improve young, learner and newly-qualified driver safety:

  1. setting challenging targets to cut the numbers of young drivers and passengers being killed and seriously injured on our roads and the number of fatal and serious injury crashes involving young drivers
  1. introducing a Graduated Driver Licensing system, involving:
  2. a minimum learner driver period of at least 12 months, encouraging learner drivers to gain supervised experience in all seasons and types of weather (this would also effectively raise the age for driving solo to 18)
  3. a minimum number of hours professional tuition that must be undertaken before someone can sit their practical driving test
  4. restrictions on newly-qualified drivers for a post-test period of at least 24 months, during which time they should carry compulsory probationary ‘P’ plates. Restrictions should include:
  5. driving at night
  6. driving with young passengers (e.g. under-21s, or between the ages of 14-25)
  7. driving high-powered vehicles (e.g. over 1.4 litre engine)
  1. introducing regular re-tests for all drivers (e.g. every five or ten years)
  1. making road safety education a compulsory part of the National Curriculum, for all ages, to foster safe behaviour and ingrain responsible attitudes towards risk-taking on the road before young people get to the age where they start learning to drive

Brake also urges the Government to take the following actions, which would improve road safety generally, but would be likely to have a particular impact on young, learner and newly-qualified driver safety:

  1. increasing spending on road safety publicity, to enable year-round high-profile campaigns which specifically target young drivers, including prime-time TV and cinema slots; and developing social marketing techniques, particularly those that use new media such as viral emails, YouTube videos and social networking sites to disseminate information
  1. making roads policing a national policing priority and giving traffic police the powers and resources they need to tackle risk-taking by young drivers (and others) on the roads, including
  2. rolling out ANPR to help catch more unlicensed and uninsured drivers
  3. enabling hit and run killer drivers to be prosecuted with tougher charges and receive tough penalties
  4. increasing the numbers of traffic police on our roads to police all types of dangerous driving
  5. giving the police powers to stop drivers in random and targeted enforcement campaigns to test for alcohol and drugs
  6. introducing a charge of driving on illegal drugs which does not need police to prove that driving is impaired
  7. reducing the drink-drive limit for all drivers, including young drivers, from 80mg to 20mg alcohol per 100ml blood

Brake’s response to specific questions from the consultation paper

Q1. What views do you have about our explanation of the high accident rate among newly-qualified drivers?

Brake agrees with the broad explanation given of the high crash and casualty rate among newly-qualified drivers outlined in the consultation document: research from the UK and abroad indicates that age, inexperience and attitudes to risk-taking are all important factors. It is clear from the high crash and casualty rates of young drivers that the current system of learning to drive is not addressing these risk factors adequately.

Age

While the consultation paper points out that newly-qualified drivers may be from any age group, it is important to remember that the vast majority are young. TRL’s first cohort study clearly shows that young novice drivers are more likely to have a crash in their first year of driving after passing the test than older novice drivers: 18% of drivers who were aged between 17 and 19 years when they passed their test were involved in a road crash in their first year of driving, whereas only 12% of drivers who were aged over 25 years when they passed their test had a crash in their first year of driving.[5] The consultation paper notes that ‘drivers starting aged 27 years are about 30% safer than drivers starting aged 17 years’.

It is difficult to fully separate the effects of age and inexperience on the high crash rate of newly-qualified drivers. (It is also possible that more of the people who delay learning to drive may have safer attitudes towards driving.) However, research into the development of the brain, and in particular, the development of the parts of the brain associated with judgement and decision-making in complex situations, confirm that age does play a significant factor in the safety of drivers.

Crashes caused by young drivers ofteninvolve a lack of higher ‘executive’cognitive functions associated with the frontal lobe of the brain – such as emotionregulation, impulse control and decision processes, but also functions that are considered ashigher-level driving skills such as eye scanning, hazard anticipation and risk management.Immature executive functioning may lie behind the poor hazard anticipation and detection, decision-making and risk management skills that characterise many teenage drivers.Brain imaging studies have shown that the frontal lobes are not fully developeduntil young people reach the age of 25 years, the same time when agestops being a significant risk factor for crashes.[6]

Analysis of international experience of changing the age at which people can learn to drive shows that crash risk can be significantly reduced by delaying the age at which drivers have access to a full licence, even if only by a matter of months.[7]

Inexperience

TRL studies and other research have clearly demonstrated that inexperience is a major risk factor for drivers and gaining experience of driving helps to reduce crash risk. TRL’s first cohort study showed that just one year’s driving experience reduced the risk of crashingby 38% for 17-year-old drivers, by 35% for 18-year-old drivers and by 32% for 19-year-old drivers.Even for older novice drivers, inexperience is clearly still a major risk factor: a 25-year-old’s crash risk reduces by 20% after one year’s driving experience, while a 30 year-old novice driver’s crash risk decreases by 12%.[8]

The younger and more inexperienced a driver is, the greater their crash risk. Brake urges the Government to implement changes that will ensure that drivers gain more experience before they are able to gain a full driving licence. Introducing a GDL scheme, as outlined in our summary of recommendations for Government, would bring the twin benefits of encouraging drivers to gain more experience, over time, while automatically increasing the age at which they could gain a full licence.

Young driver attitudes

Brake agrees with the Government’s assessment that the majority of young drivers are not intentionally dangerous, although our own and other surveys of young drivers show that more of them report taking risks and acting illegally while driving than older drivers.[9]

This research, together with research into the attitudes of young drivers (by Stradling and others) suggests that it is not just the case that young drivers do not realise their limitations; their attitudes towards driving also lead them to under-estimate the consequences of behaviour that they know to be risky.

  • Young drivers differ from older drivers in their attitudes towards driving. Young drivers report a greater enjoyment of driving and are more likely to drive for pleasure. They get a stronger sense of personal identity or status from driving; this includes feelings of pride, power, and confidence.[10]
  • Young drivers, especially young male drivers, are also more likely to seek thrills from driving, are more fearless and more compliant with peer pressure.[11]
  • Young male drivers are also far more likely to indulge in competitive behaviour by driving dangerously around other vehicles. Between 1999 and 2003, 17-18 year-old males had 70% more crashes involving “interaction or competition with other road users” than 30-59 year-old male drivers.[12]
  • Young drivers have a high opinion of their own skills on the road and rate their own performance as above average. They are also more likely to equate ‘good’ driving with the ability to master the controls of the car at higher speeds.[13]

Stradling concludes that these attitudes make young drivers more inclined than older drivers to take risks on the road, such as driving fast, accelerating hard and cornering at high speed.[14]

To improve young driver safety, it is important to tackle the attitudes that make young drivers more inclined to take risks on the road and to minimise their exposure to these risks.

Speed, drink and drugs

Young drivers are more likely to seek thrills from driving fast and cornering at high speed than older drivers.[15] Even sticking to the speed limit can be too fast in the wrong conditions – such as in ice or snow, or on bendy country roads - but young drivers, particularly male drivers, may be reluctant to drive under the speed limit for fear of ‘losing face’ in front of friends.

Compared to drivers of all ages, young drivers aged 17-19 are ten times as likely to have a drink-drive crash and young drivers aged 20-24 are four and a half times as likely to have a drink-drive crash per mile driven (17-19 year olds have 41 drink-drive crashes and 20-24 year olds have 18 drink-drive crashes per 100 million miles driven, compared to all drivers, who have 4 drink-drive crashes per 100 million miles driven).[16]

Young drivers under 25 are more than twice as likely to fail a breath test as older drivers (6.3% failure rate, compared to 3.6%). When they are involved in a crash where someone is killed or injured, young drivers under 25 are twice as likely to fail a breath test as older drivers (4.0% failure rate, compared to 2.0)%.[17]

Brake urges the Government to introduce powers for police to enable blanket and targeted roadside breath testing and ensure that there are adequate resources to enable forces to carry out enforcement checks to a level at which drivers would expect it to be more likely than not for them to be caught if they chose to drink and drive. This would improve the safety of all drivers, but given the additional crash risk for young drivers who choose to drink and drive, would be likely to be particularly effective in preventing young driver drink-drive crashes.

Driving at night

Driving at night requires specific skills, extra concentration – and extreme care. Young drivers may be under the impression that because roads are quieter at night it is safer for them to speed or pay less attention to the road. In fact, you can’t see as far. Driving at night requires specific skills, extra concentration and extreme care.Drivers are more likely to be tired, drunk or drugged and so are any other road users who are out and about, such as drunk pedestrians rolling out of pubs and clubs in the early hours.

Evidence published by the Association of British Insurers and the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows that young drivers in this country have a higher proportion of crashes in the evenings and early mornings than older drivers. Between the hours of 2am and 5am, male drivers are 17 times more likely to be killed or seriously injured in a road crash than male drivers of all ages.[18]The proportion of crashes that occur at night reduces as the age of the driver increases.[19]

Carrying passengers

Research shows that peer pressure can encourage bad driving and result in drivers ‘showing off’ to their passengers. Behavioural research shows that young male drivers in particular, are much more likely to take risks on the road if there are young male passengers in their vehicle.[20] All too often when serious crashes involve a young driver, it is not only the driver who has been killed or seriously injured, but their young passengers as well.

US research confirms that the already high crash rate for 16-19-year-olds driving alone is greatly increased when passengers are present. The more passengers, the more risk and the risk is higher when the drivers are aged 16 and 17 rather than 18 and 19. With two or more passengers, the fatal crash risk for 16-19 year-old drivers is more than five times what it is when driving alone.[21][22]

Due to the substantial additional risks for young drivers, restrictions on driving at night and while carrying passengers are key components of GDL systems in many countries. Brake urges the Government to introduce similar restrictions as part of a GDL system to minimise drivers’ exposure to these risks until they have more driving experience under their belt. Many GDL systems set a lower drink-drive limit for drivers at the ‘learner’ and ‘restricted’ licence stages: Brake is urging the Government to reduce the current dangerously high drink-drive limit for all drivers. Restrictions should also be considered for any other substantial additional risks identified by analysis of insurance and crash data – anecdotalevidence suggests that inexperienced drivers are more likely to crash when driving more powerful vehicles than they are used to, which would suggest a restriction on the size of engine would be a key additional measure.

Q2. Do you have any comments about the contents of the Partial Impact Assessment published alongside this Paper?

Brake notes the high level of assumptions being made about costs in the Partial Impact Assessment, which make it difficult to comment on the cost-benefit estimates for each of the options outlined.For example, the annual value given to holding a full driving licence for new learner drivers is estimated to be between £800 and £1,500. The footnotes state that these figures are based on: