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Rewriting the rules of the road
3 months ago
You only really learn to drive when the formal lessons are over
It was over the next two or three years that I actually learned to drive. There were moments, near-misses and misjudgments as you’d expect, but nothing more. No crashes. But within my extended group of friends there were plenty – the lad who stuffed his Peugeot 206 into a stout oak tree in the next village, the football team goalkeeper who put his old 205 into a ditch, and the guy who drove his 106 (were they always small Peugeots?) into the back of a little old lady’s car at a notorious junction.
Even so, we were the fortunate ones. Nobody seriously hurt themselves or anyone else, no lives were lost and for all the dented pride and bodywork, no one found themselves on the wrong side of the law. We got lucky. Young drivers (aged 17-24) hold only seven per cent of UK driving licences, but are responsible for 20 per cent of serious and fatal road traffic accidents. Predictably enough, it’s young men who are most at risk – four times more likely to be killed or badly hurt on the road than the average of all drivers aged 25 or older, and twice as likely to be involved in a fatal accident while speeding compared to young women of the same age.
Rural roads are most dangerous, statistically speaking, and young drivers are far more likely to crash at night.
Does any of that surprise you? I doubt it, but nor should we accept it as inevitable. New and young drivers are getting hurt or killed far more than any other group, which suggests they’re not being well prepared for life behind the wheel. Maturity and experience do of course come with time, but collectively we must decide if we’re happy for that time to pass at its own rate, or if we should accelerate it.
"Graduated Driver Licensing isn’t a pipe dream – it’s already happening in Northern Ireland"
As you read this, a coalition of road safety campaigners, Police & Crime Commissioners, emergency services and driving instructors are campaigning for a new driving licence system to be introduced across Great Britain. Called Graduated Driver Licensing, or GDL, it would impose restrictions on novice drivers with a view to addressing those harrowing statistics.
GDL isn’t a pipe dream – it’s already happening in Northern Ireland. In fact, if I’d been learning to drive in Belfast in October 2026 (when GDL will be introduced) rather than Bristol in March 2004, my experience would have been very different indeed. For one thing, I wouldn’t have been able to pass my test just three months after turning 17 – there will be a minimum six-month learning period before a new driver can take their practical driving test. Nor could I have taken my friends for a moonlight ride – for six months after acquiring their licence, drivers aged 24 or under will not be permitted to carry more than one passenger aged 14-20 between the hours of 11pm and 6am (other than immediate family members), the objective being to prevent cars full of teens from haring about the place at night.
Furthermore, new drivers in Northern Ireland will be required to complete a formal programme of training consisting of 14 modules that will be recorded in a digital logbook and signed off by an approved driving instructor. It’s not yet clear what those 14 modules will be. New drivers must also display an R-plate for 24 months after passing their practical test, up from 12 months currently. When accompanied by a driving instructor learners will be allowed, but not required, to drive on the motorway.
“We are looking at the thin end of the wedge, and as the wedge grows fatter, might the basic freedoms of young and new drivers begin to be eroded? Will their movements one day be remotely monitored?”
GDL (which also applies to motorcyclists) will be enforced by police with those in contravention facing fines and points on their licence. Encouragingly, however, the Chief Superintendent responsible for road safety in Northern Ireland said it wasn’t his intention to hand out fines and endorsements like confetti – his approach, at least to begin with, will be to focus on education as much as enforcement.
A more structured approach to driver training. Better education. Restrictions on carrying groups of young passengers at night. I don’t see anything within GDL for new drivers to get terribly upset about, though I’m sure I’d have been appalled at 17. What I know now that young people do not is that six months, or even 24 months, will pass in the blink of an eye, and soon these restrictions won’t apply to them anymore.
Which isn’t to say I don’t have my concerns. One representative from Northern Ireland’s licensing authority described the forthcoming regulations as ‘GDL-lite’ – in his view this is just the first iteration and further restrictions (though he doesn’t like the term) will follow. We are looking at the thin end of the wedge, and as the wedge grows fatter, might the basic freedoms of young and new drivers begin to be eroded? Will their movements one day be remotely monitored?
Sports cars are off limits for most new drivers. Should midnight drives be too?
There is also the question of all those variables that GDL does not currently address, such as the kinds of cars new drivers are permitted to drive. Nor do there seem to be any improvements being made to the practical driving test, which has been woefully inadequate for decades – no need for new drivers to demonstrate their competence in bad weather, on the motorway, at night, on low grip surfaces and so on. Maybe those 14 modules will address some of these.
Britain is fast becoming an outlier for not having some sort of GDL in place. Versions of it already exist in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, parts of the US and much of northern Europe. Data from those countries suggest GDL can reduce fatal accidents among young drivers by more than 30 per cent. It seems to work. Motorcycle riders across the UK will already be familiar with the age and experience-related restrictions that limit the power output of the bikes they can ride, so graduated licensing is hardly without precedent on these shores.
Whether or not GDL will be implemented in Great Britain ultimately comes down to the will of politicians. Those who campaigned for its introduction in Northern Ireland talk of the widespread support they were met with among elected representatives and members of the public alike, as well as key stakeholders like emergency services and insurance industry bodies. They say nighttime passenger restrictions must be a non-negotiable component of GDL legislation, but that such restrictions are always the hardest to reach agreement on.
If our politicians see GDL as a vote-winner, you can be sure they will support it. However, those who’ve been through the process already say some politicians simply assume the public does not support GDL, which to some extent may well be true. The campaigning is underway already.
On reflection, I think there were four main reasons I didn’t become one of those statistics as a young driver. The first is the most significant – dumb luck. The second was the fact that I drove a modern car (a 2001 Ford Focus) as a youngster, a vehicle with far better road-holding than your average first car. Third, I took driving very seriously, making it my business to be a good driver and learn all the time. Finally, I was respectful of the consequences of it all going badly wrong, from getting hurt to spiking my insurance premium to finding myself in the cold embrace of the judiciary. I had the right attitude.
So if we can only make points one to four mandatory for all new drivers, enormous strides will be made. Except you can’t. In light of which fact, perhaps the measures prescribed by GDL are the best we’ve got.
I want to throw this out to the Ti community. What can we do, realistically and cost-effectively, to make our roads safer for young and inexperienced drivers, and all those around them?
