There is evidence that driving instructors attempt to influence the views of any learners who clearly have poor attitudes to driving, but that they usually do this in an uninformed, intuitive way. Currently, instructors are given very little help about how to do this correctly. This paper describes a set of resources, developed at two British universities, to: (1) educate driving instructors about which attitudes influence crash involvement; (2) suggest how they could try to improve the attitudes of learner drivers; and (3) provide education materials designed for learner drivers, aged 17-25, to study in their own time and positively influence their attitudes to driving and road safety. The resources were developed as two packs, one aimed at learners and one aimed at instructors. The learner pack has an introduction and sections on driving at speed, handling passengers, and common excuses for driving offences. The instructor pack emphasises the importance of learners' attitudes to road safety, and presents some practical attitude change techniques. The effect of the resources on learners' attitudes to speeding, close following, dangerous overtaking, and traffic light violations was evaluated. The learners were split into four groups, and interviewed. The resources seemed to have a small but positive effect on learners' attitudes, intentions, and current speeding behaviour.
Abstract