North East Young Driver Casualty Analysis, 2007 – 2011

This report investigates the extent to which collisions involving young drivers are a road safety issue in the North East region of England, and gives suggestions on where resources could be targeted in the future to address this problem.

Young drivers have been traditionally seen as presenting a greater risk of becoming involved in a road traffic collision then other road users. The statistics explored in this report confirm that this is still the case in the North East, and a great deal of research has been undertaken by various organisations over the past few years on the underlying causes as to why young drivers tend to pose a greater road safety risk than other road users.

One of the main things that this research tends to point towards is the need for enhanced education and training for young drivers to prepare them for the dangers of driving before they become involved in a collision, coupled with appropriate advertising and publicity aimed at this road user group to raise their awareness of potential problem areas.

This report therefore looks into the main statistics on young driver collisions – such as when, where and how they occur – to provide road safety professionals in the North East with information as to where their limited time and resources could be best concentrated to attempt to further reduce the numbers of young drivers becoming involved in collisions in the region.

The main results from this report show that collisions involving young drivers have been reducing well over the past five years. In 2007, a young driver was involved in just under a third of all collisions in the region, while in 2011 this had dropped to less than a quarter. However, given that young drivers only account for 8% of the region’s driving licence holders, they are still over-represented in the collision and casualty figures.