Minimum driving age 18, learn for a year before test
This is based on the House of Commons Transport Committee Publication:
The rumours have been around for a long time, but this is the first report which actually suggests that any of these things should be done. The reasoning behind much of this is interesting, though often speculative, and many people have suggested that the only reason for all of this is not the safety of young drivers, but the EU recommendation that throughout the community the driving age should be 18. The feeling is that we had to comply some time!
None of the report should be particularly surprising, especially not to those in the driver training industry - the fact that the biggest killer of 17-21 year old women is the young men who drive them around has been known for a long time. The report asserts also that when young drivers have 3 or more people in the car, the mortality rate triples (surely this is simple maths). This information is then used (reasonably in our view) to suggest the restriction on passenger numbers. Some thought has gone into this, restricting passengers aged between 10 and 20 (hopefully not affecting young mums, who are seen as a much lower risk), possibly only during the hours of 11pm-5am - a time seen as the greatest risk time for young (if not all) drivers.
The principle proposal is that learners should get tuition throughout a 12 month period, completing a certain amount of logged driving hours at specific points through the year. There are many rumours about the total amount of hours that drivers will need to log before going to test, but the report doesn’t specify an actual quantity. It also does not specify that this driving should be done with an Approved Driving Instructor (ADI).
However, there are suggestions that ADIs should be able to “sign off” some of the manoeuvres, allowing more time to be spent during the test on more challenging driving situations. We think this could work, as long as ADIs were given adequate CPD in order to accurately assess the manoeuvres, and as long as there were no problems with regards to corruption.
Many in the industry feel that learners should only be able to learn with ADIs, but we feel that this would be a real problem for many people, cutting out those responsible supervisors who actually do a good job of helping learners gain experience. There are also calls for all tests to be carried out in dual controlled cars and though this would be reassuring to the examiners, and would help with their health and safety risk assessments, we don’t feel that it would benefit the industry. Though many feel that they would get more work from such proposals, we feel that it would simply cut down the customer base.
In general, these proposals are pretty reasonable, though not revolutionary and will probably have very little effect KSI (Killed and Seriously Injured) statistics. On the down side they may well increase the amount of people who drive without licences or insurance in a similar way to the New Drivers Act seems to have done.
In the short term, we anticipate a lot more customers requesting intensive courses in order to get through before these regulations become law. Once the regulations are in place we anticipate a lot less people learning to drive. At the moment, though it costs on average around £850 to learn to drive, many people don’t recognise this and simply see £20 odd pounds a week as a reasonable expense they can afford. Once minimum hours proposals are introduced, everyone will be able to see a minimum cost, and will be able to make their minds up whether it is worth it. With the increases in the cost of motoring, including the introduction of road charging and insurance going up we anticipate that many people will simply decide not to do it.
We’ll keep you updated as soon as anything else changes.
All content © Tim Manwaring