New test could aid young drivers, conference told

Young drivers are the most vulnerable road-users. They are more likely to kill themselves and are more likely to kill others than any other age group, a conference on road safety at the Royal Hospital, Dublin, was told yesterday.

Delivering his paper entitled The Psychology of the Young Irish Driver or What Shall We do With The Novice Driver?, Mr Ray Fuller, of Trinity College Dublin, said young drivers "include a subgroup of high-risk lifestyle individuals who tended to be exposed to more vulnerable conditions such as peer pressure".

Additional problems with this sub-group of young drivers were that they adopted high-risk driving styles and tended to overestimate their ability to drive safely.

Young drivers generally were not good at reading the road for signs of distant hazards, they saw less risk in various driving situations and were more likely to be in driving situations where they would come into conflict with other drivers. In addition to being less likely to be able to control speed, they were less likely to be able to stop within limits and were more likely to underestimate the consequences of dangerous driving. Their accidents typically involved driving too fast for the prevailing conditions. Mr Fuller said it was surprising that while driving tests differed across Europe the casualty tolls in relation to these drivers did not. He felt, therefore, that a new approach to the driving test should be considered.

While still allowing drivers the important practical road experience, the test should include hazard perception training; self-analysis of driving habits coupled with group training and human factors such as what drivers are able to do in relation to their competence. He said education pretest and post-test as well as enforcement measures would help them to mature as road-users.