Improving Road Safety Together Preparing new drivers for real life on our roads Carly Brookfield

1. Improving Road Safety Together Preparing new drivers for real life on our roads Carly Brookfield Driving Instructors Association

3. Who/what is irresponsible? • Parents who pay just enough to get their children through the test • Instructors who allow them to, with little or no explanation of the benefits of being correctly prepared • Accompanying parents passing on bad habits due to lack of up-skilling and ensuring their knowledge is up to date • Parents with young impressionable children in the car • Licence holders who shape and influence young people every day • Have-a-go-heroes: those conducting road safety and driver education activity with no real expertise or experience • A system that allows non qualified people to conduct driver training • the trainee instructor licence • post test/advanced driver training • Regulation which requires us to MOT our vehicles regularly, but not our driving* • *(most RTC’s are 90% human failure, 10% mechanical failure)

4. Who/what is really irresponsible? • A learning to drive curriculum funneled towards a one-shot test with a bigger focus on reversing and parking than independent driving • How irresponsible of any Government, past, present, or future to continue to allow 195,000 injury incidents a year to occur without any meaningful intervention. • How dangerous to cut a road safety budget by 80% when over so many people die on our roads annually • Is there complacency about having one of the best road safety record in Europe? • Is an arrogant belief in our driving standards our greatest problem, and biggest danger?

5. What are the costs of being irresponsible? • £1.7m per death • Cost to the NHS and other public services of KSI’s • Increased cost to every taxpayer • The grief to 1,000s of families

6. Better solutions? Education • A consistent road user safety education curriculum in schools (intra and extra-curricular) • Intervention and preventative education from an early age • A consistent approach to road safety education delivered by road safety and driver training professionals • Children will train parents and peers • Re-education and more frequent re-training of existing licence holders • More rigorous focus on the quality of all driver and road safety education programmes • A competency based, mandatory learning to drive curriculum with a mandatory requirement to be taught by an ADI • Graduated learning, not graduate licences There is a current annual spend in schools of £159m on: • SRE (sexual health) • Drug abuse Yet more young people die in cars

7. Betters solutions? A new learning to drive curriculum • Mandatory lessons with a qualified trainer • Recorded in a log book • Pre and post test • Core competency and modular assessment approach – not just a single shot test • Increased focus on independent driving – manoeuvres rarely kill • Accompanying parent courses • To improve the quality of private practice • Telematics for all new drivers • To help them assess their strengths and weaknesses • With a trainer to support them • Increasing the quality and skills of driver trainers • Closing any loopholes allowing non-driver trainers to train • Consistent delivery of the National Standards for Driver and Rider Training • The right people involved in driver and road safety education, for the right reasons

8. Fantasy driver development cycle?

9. Better solutions? The C words • Collaboration • Cooperation • Consistent • Continuous • Competent • Curricular (and extra curricular) • Car occupant and all road user safety • ConsideredCSR • Common cause – the conservation of life

10. Thank youcarlybrookfield@driving.orgwww.driving.org