Young Driver Focus 2014 (conference)

The 11 presenters at this event were challenged with putting forward suggestions and solutions to help reduce casualties and collisions caused by young drivers.

Presentations included:

Carly Brookfield, DIA
Carly Brookfield, chief executive of the Driving Instructors Association, suggested that parents should refresh their own driving skills before accompanying their children as they learn to drive. She also made a plea for “graduated learning, not graduated licensing”, rather than the current system of a learning to drive curriculum focused on a one-shot test”. She also suggested there could be a role for telematics in driver training.

Poppy Husband, TRL
Poppy Husband, TRL, said there is strong evidence to support graduated driver licencing, but was critical of current pre-driver interventions, the evidence for which she said was “weak at best”.

Natalie Oakley, Gloucestershire RSP
Natalie Oakley gave a fascinating insight into the psyche of young drivers on the back of a research project conducted by the Gloucestershire Road Safety Partnership. She stressed the wide differences between drivers aged 17-19yrs and those aged 20-24yrs and said these should be treated as two different groups. For the younger group, the car is often a venue in its own right, while for the older group it is a means of getting around. She suggested that the thing most likely to change driving behaviour is a ‘personal scare’, but also said that many young people are looking to road safety professionals to help change attitudes and raise awareness of the risks and consequences of reckless and dangerous driving. She also suggested that many young people would welcome more enforcement by the police.

Lisa Dorn, Cranfield University
Lisa Dorn, Cranfield University, said “we know so much about driver behavior, but so little (of this information) reaches the ground”. She also said that in order to influence behaviour one must first understand motivation, and that profiling drivers is key to targeting interventions.

Liz Baldock, DVSA
Liz Baldock, DVSA digital comms manager, offered a series of tips for connecting with new drivers online. She highlighted the importance of speaking the right language (and avoiding jargon), listening to your audience, avoiding shock messages (because people think it won’t happen to them), and choosing your online name carefully in order to engage rather than put people off.

Conference presentations were recorded and can be viewed and downloaded free of charge from the event website (link below).