Proposals to Raise Driving Age to 18

[MGF]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6904821.stm

Reasonable chance at least some of this may become law. I like the idea of more restrictions on younger drivers, particularly carrying passengers.

[James]

Interesting. Wonder if there would be a link between this and lower accident rates amongst younger drivers?

[Standard Dave]

Wasn't raising the age to 18 surgested a couple of years ago to bring some different EU countries into line with each other.

The same as the 1997 changes to Goods vehicles and Passenger vehicles.

[jasonh]

"I've lost two friends in accidents but I wouldn't change the law on the driving age."

Jeeeeeeeez. This typifies in my view the major problem with road safety which is that, because of the way the car has evolved over time, many people fail to see the current level of mortality and morbidity on the roads as the absolute feckin' outrage that it is. If the car was invented last week and suddenly all these people were dying we'd be bloody angry about it! But because it's a problem that's evolved from the early days of the car it seems to be seen as some kind of occupational hazard. I suppose it's rather like what people sometimes say about how alcohol would never be legal if it was only just discovered.

[ScoobyChris]

Does anyone else think that more driving education in schools (a bit like the Americans appear to have) would be useful in educating kids and starting them younger, rather than older? I've always loved cars and my parents used to let me practice clutch control on their drive (it was a nice steep drive!) when I was 14 and I was also lucky enough to have a driving lesson on private grounds when I was 15. It got me a taster for it and I remember from that point I was asking my Dad lots of questions about how/why he drove, etc, etc. It also meant it wasn't quite such a novelty at 17 so I may have been more responsible and more "experienced" than others in my class when I got behind the wheel?

Chris

[ipsg.glf]

"I've lost two friends in accidents but I wouldn't change the law on the driving age."

Jeeeeeeeez. This typifies in my view the major problem with road safety which is that, because of the way the car has evolved over time, many people fail to see the current level of mortality and morbidity on the roads as the absolute feckin' outrage that it is. If the car was invented last week and suddenly all these people were dying we'd be bloody angry about it! But because it's a problem that's evolved from the early days of the car it seems to be seen as some kind of occupational hazard. I suppose it's rather like what people sometimes say about how alcohol would never be legal if it was only just discovered.

An outrage? Sorry? Do you think that people purposely set out every day to kill other people on the road? Apart from the odd lunatic, most collisions are due to people making a simple mistake. A tragic, but simple mistake.

It's like trying to ban sneezing.

We have to look at fatalities in terms of the number of miles travelled by road users in total. Every activity is risky, even picking your nose.

We just need to get it into a sense of proportion. Expecting all road users to get to IAM/RoSPA/Class 1 standard is never going to happen so we should simply chip away at each collision causation factor as best we can.

I agree that 10 people killed per day is too many but how can we stop people making simple mistakes?

[nuster100]

Does anyone else think that more driving education in schools (a bit like the Americans appear to have) would be useful in educating kids and starting them younger, rather than older? I've always loved cars and my parents used to let me practice clutch control on their drive (it was a nice steep drive!) when I was 14 and I was also lucky enough to have a driving lesson on private grounds when I was 15. It got me a taster for it and I remember from that point I was asking my Dad lots of questions about how/why he drove, etc, etc. It also meant it wasn't quite such a novelty at 17 so I may have been more responsible and more "experienced" than others in my class when I got behind the wheel?

Chris

I think education is the key. People also need to see the consiqenses of their actions. Maybee some hard hitting videos after they pass. Raising the age will do nothing.

We need to stop things like this: Link

For those on the Yeovil driving day, this was the road from Yeovil to Sherbourne. Rumor has it, his speed was about 130mph. I know it takes more than 100mph to leave the ground at that spot.

Such a waste

Jay

[jont]

I think education is the key. People also need to see the consiqenses of their actions. Maybee some hard hitting videos after they pass.

We have a scheme run locally where an ADI runs a series of discussions/presentations with 16 year olds prior to them learning to drive. I think they also have the opportunity to try driving in a council works depot too. As part of this my wife has started giving a talk about the accident she had aged 16 where her boyfriend (not me) had a major accident, lost control of the car and put her in hospital for 6 weeks. No-one else was involved - simply driving too fast for the conditions, panic braked, locked up and ended up in a ditch.

She's had several people in tears (and upset by the pictures of the aftermath) and a few girls have said it's made them stop getting in a car with their boyfriend again. The impact seems to be that it's the first hand recounting that makes the biggest difference where videos and the like aren't so effective.

[jasonh]

An outrage? Sorry? Do you think that people purposely set out every day to kill other people on the road? Apart from the odd lunatic, most collisions are due to people making a simple mistake. A tragic, but simple mistake.

It's like trying to ban sneezing.

It's nothing like trying to ban sneezing. And is it really just a simple mistake that causes most accidents? Is driving far too fast for the conditions a simple mistake? I don't think people set out deliberately to cause collisions - of course not - but the number of deaths on the roads is an absurdity and outside of the road safety movement people do not seem to be as concerned as they could be. There is a view that 'It won't happen to me'. If so many people were dying by any other preventable cause then there would be uproar. If driving were inherently an activity whose level of risk explained the level of deaths, that would be a different matter, but a very high proportion of road deaths are due to avoidable mistakes (whether you want to call them simple or not) and that should rightly energise people into action on a greater scale than currently seems to be the case.

[JamesAllport]

ipsg.glf wrote:

An outrage? Sorry? Do you think that people purposely set out every day to kill other people on the road?

In the course of training for ordination in the Church of England, I've now helped prepare a couple of funerals of people killed in crashes, and I've some experience of hospital chaplaincy to their families.

Outrage feels like a pretty good word to me. I think it captures something of the sense of the breathtaking violence of having someone you love killed unexpectedly. Each time I've sat with a family, it's been blatantly obvious in the atmosphere in the room.

I don't know what the answer is. Modern cars make the driver feel impregnable, and isolate him/her from the reality of moving at high speed. I drove a Mercedes recently (not on the public road before someone gets on their high horse) in which 150mph was quieter and less dramatic than 60mph in my car. Is it any wonder people feel "isolated" and able to de-personalise other road users?

James

[tonyh]

James wrote:-
I don't know what the answer is. Modern cars make the driver feel impregnable, and isolate him/her from the reality of moving at high speed. I drove a Mercedes recently (not on the public road before someone gets on their high horse) in which 150mph was quieter and less dramatic than 60mph in my car. Is it any wonder people feel "isolated" and able to de-personalise other road users?

I think yo have got it right James. 80% of driving is in the head, anyone can learn the mechanics of manipulating controls in a matter of hours whereas it takes a lot of experience to control the vehicle properly.
I see youngsters and not so young driving down streets at speeds well above the speeds that conditions justify apparently quite oblivious to the hazards.
As most fatalities occur in the urban environment, the emphasis should be on education plus a speed camera on every corner in the city!
Airbags, seat belts and a comfortable internal environment lull people into a false sense of security or a selfish attitude that they are impervious to any outside influence.

[TripleS]

"I've lost two friends in accidents but I wouldn't change the law on the driving age."

Jeeeeeeeez. This typifies in my view the major problem with road safety which is that, because of the way the car has evolved over time, many people fail to see the current level of mortality and morbidity on the roads as the absolute feckin' outrage that it is. If the car was invented last week and suddenly all these people were dying we'd be bloody angry about it! But because it's a problem that's evolved from the early days of the car it seems to be seen as some kind of occupational hazard. I suppose it's rather like what people sometimes say about how alcohol would never be legal if it was only just discovered.

An outrage? Sorry? Do you think that people purposely set out every day to kill other people on the road? Apart from the odd lunatic, most collisions are due to people making a simple mistake. A tragic, but simple mistake.

It's like trying to ban sneezing.

We have to look at fatalities in terms of the number of miles travelled by road users in total. Every activity is risky, even picking your nose.

We just need to get it into a sense of proportion. Expecting all road users to get to IAM/RoSPA/Class 1 standard is never going to happen so we should simply chip away at each collision causation factor as best we can.

I agree that 10 people killed per day is too many but how can we stop people making simple mistakes?

Absolutely right Mr .glf. I agree with you completely.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[Rick]

I think the sad answr is that it is human nature. Boys will be boys, and now it seems so will girls. There is a young girl where i live who has just passed her test and spends all night flying around with a car full of mates. I hope I dont have to report "I told you so" I don't agree with raising the age, but I do agree with restricing passengers. I think also a lot of it has to do with the availability of cars to youngsters. In my day I had to earn the money to buy my car, pass my test and run it. Nowadays I see loads of 17 year olds getting cars and lessons bought for them by their parents, hence there appears to be more 17 year olds on the road. (Just my opinion and if anyone has figures to back this up please feel free to add them) I'm sure if people here are honest with themselves they didn't drive in an advanced manner at 17, and also they would have been mightily peeved when reaching 16 that the goalposts were moved. I know I would have been.

[Susie]

For the full report rather than a bit of BBC-style reporting which only touches upon the subject, you can read it by clicking here:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 5/355i.pdf

ScoobyChris said

Does anyone else think that more driving education in schools (a bit like the Americans appear to have) would be useful in educating kids and starting them younger, rather than older?

The committee appear to be taking the situation of young/new/inexperienced driver deaths and serious injury statistics quite robustly. There is a wonderful ‘wriggling moment’ from the Minister under questioning about the inclusion of driving and driver safety in the curriculum. As he was previously quoted as stating that the curriculum was already 150% full, the Education Department (or whatever it’s called this week) will have to do a re-think with some urgency if he wishes to avoid receiving a detention from Ms Dunwoody

ipsg.glf said

Do you think that people purposely set out every day to kill other people on the road? Apart from the odd lunatic, most collisions are due to people making a simple mistake. A tragic, but simple mistake.

and

We have to look at fatalities in terms of the number of miles travelled by road users in total. Every activity is risky, even picking your nose…

Of course 99.999% of the population don’t go out expecting to crash but it isn’t as simplistic as being a tragic, simple mistake. Often a crash occurs because two drivers or a combination of road users (car/pedestrian; bike/car etc) don’t make the correct critical risk decisions. Everyone can to a great extent, control the risks caused by other people but much of this comes with experience. We also need the time to develop a sense of where the most likely danger will come from. Steve Haley sums up risk assessment and control as Speed, Surprise and Space.
Speed (too fast for the situation, rather than ‘speeding’) – more crashes occur at speeds below the limit in force
Surprise – younger drivers tend to rely on their fast reactions, which is of less importance than reacting to the right things. We have to learn how to anticipate in order to predict and control a likely event. We also have to display a car body language that is easily interpreted by others and doesn’t surprise them
Space – we need to understand when and how our space is threatened by others’ impending encroachment in order to assess the risk and that space needs to be increased when the level of threat heightens

The learning environment and novice test has previously been too much focused on the mechanical skills and too little on the mental processing required to be “a careful, competent driver” as detailed by the DSA to gain a pass. This report goes some way towards identifying how improvements can be made, accepting that draconian changes will not be acceptable to a public that has come to expect driving as an automatic right.

There iis a hint of acceptance (and I hope not to offend the youngest or newest drivers here) that parts our brains don’t fully develop until we are in our mid-twenties. It would be impossible to make a drastic change to the age at which we could start learning to drive and any raising of that age would not sit comfortably with the strategists in the major political parties. By keeping the starting age at 17 but not allowing the test to be taken until 18 and with the need to provide evidence of an ongoing structured process of learning, rather than a last-minute dash to concentrate the learning process into the final few months, the committee has done much to encourage a greater depth of knowledge.

I was pleased to note the inclusion of a modular signing-off process. Ideally, if the various manoeuvring techniques could be assessed by an suitably qualified instructor other than the one employed by the candidate, we would hopefully remove any inclination to circumvent the system. This would greatly enhance the opportunity to demonstrate the mental processes of driving, rather than the ability to execute a perfect turn in the road. Additionally, I think it’s a good idea to suggest the inclusion of what they call ‘commentary’, but to my mind should just be an interaction between the examiner and the candidate, that would enable the examiner to form an opinion of the decision-making processes. In its simplified form, it would not be the onerous task some people feel is necessary to achieve ‘standard commentary’ parlance.

We tend to forget that there are many, many more nervous, hesitant new drivers on the road, who feel out of their depth and keep asking for additional guidance on motorway driving, night and foul weather driving etc. They far outweigh the very small minority of headline grabbing thrill seekers and risk takers. The former are the ones who will benefit from the experience and guidance of the philanthropic members here, who are happy to devote time to them. The latter could also benefit but convincing them that safe driving can be just as much fun as their adopted style is indeed a tough challenge.

Susie

[martine]

Nice one Susie.