The Under 17 Car Club does a superb job of helping and guiding youngsters - from their website:
There are currently about 300 members and the Club is open to anyone - waiting list permitting - who is tall enough to drive and is between the ages of 12 years and 15 years during the year of joining.
This means youngsters can join when they are 11, provided their 12th birthday occurs during their first season but once they have had their 15th birthday they are too old
Their results tell an interesting story - in that (just as with 'advanced' driving organisations) their ex-members have a better driving record than non-participants
The Under 17 Car Club Survey report, (PDF Download HERE) is the first detailed study into the driving behaviour of ex-Club members - those who have reached 17, left the Car Club and started driving on the public roads. The survey shows that our young drivers are:
* less than half as likely to have an accident in their first year of driving;
* have one accident per 17½ driving years;
* 80% to 90% likely to pass their Driving Test at the first attempt (varies with time spent at the Club);
* convicted of a driving offence once per 52½ driving years;
* in the case of young male drivers, over 6 times less likely to have a motoring conviction.
I wish someone (or an organisation) could fill the gap for those who are effectively the next generation of drivers, who are too old to join this scheme and are closest to embarking on their driving careers - namely the 15-17 year-olds. The main problem for anyone wanting to plug the gap would be one of good old H&S - very few people are prepared to take on the
responsibility of all the legal minutiae.
If you've sorted out all the mechanical and physical parts of driving in an off-road environment, you're far better placed to focus the mind on the mental aspects of driving, mixing with other road users and - as I said in my original post, a page back, firmly establishing 'best practice' foundations, not just seeing things but actually processing and acting upon that information.
Few people are as lucky as I was, having an enthusiastic father and a great-grandfather with a rather large network of driveways throughout his estate, on which I could crunch and grind my first tentative forays into driving
The Ministry of Defence is once again considering the future of all its pockets of land - perhaps we could lobby for being given a corner of some of these areas. Unfortunately, they are tasked with selling or renting at market rates. We would need to put forward a good case for being given a 'charitable' discount or even work on having 'free' access. I appreciate that country folk would benefit more than city dwellers as virtually all the brown field sites are being gobbled up for other purposes
But it's worth a try.
Susie