The Good, the Bad and the Talented: Young Drivers’ Perspectives on Good Driving and Learning to Drive

The impact of young people’s attitudes and mindsets on their driving, and the possible implications for interventions to improve road safety among this group, were investigated in a series of two workshops with each of six groups of young people (55 in total). The workshops and analysis focused on understanding how young people experience the learning process, their defininition of its goal, good driving, and the implications of these for driving behaviour.

Participants defined being a good driver as the mastery of three different and parallel kinds of activity.

Driving as a physical activity is about safely controlling and guiding a physical object through a complex physical environment. Key components of good driving are:

• Knowing how to control a car (a basic prerequisite) and, more specifically, the
particular car you are driving – including having a good awareness of the car’s
size and capabilities;
• Reading and reacting to road conditions, weather, road signs and other aspects of
the environment;
• Reading and anticipating the behaviour of other drivers.

Driving as a social activity is about operating in a shared space in a way that ensures everyone is kept happy, and in a way that builds and maintains a desired image of oneself as a driver. The fact that driving is a social activity (it takes place in a shared space) does not mean that it is sociable: most of the requirements of good driving as a social activity mentioned by participants were about keeping out of other people’s way and not annoying them. In particular, good driving means being a ‘good obstacle’, by being consistent, confident and predictable, and conforming to general patterns of behaviour.

Driving as an emotional activity is about preserving an appropriate frame of mind to drive well in the face of distractions and annoyances:

• In order to perform well at driving as a physical activity, a driver needs to
maintain the right level of mental alertness – neither too relaxed (‘zoned out’)
nor too stressed (‘in a panic’).
• In order to perform well at driving as a social activity, a driver needs to maintain the right level of assertiveness – neither too aggressive nor cowed and
unconfident. However, participants were more forgiving of their own tendency to
get aggressive than of other people’s.