In the Association of British Insurers (ABI) 2006 paper Young Drivers: Reducing Death on the Roads — Four Actions to Save Lives, they reported that young drivers were more than twice as likely as other drivers to make an insurance claim. Department for Transport statistics confirmed that young drivers are far more likely to be involved in a serious road collision than other drivers. With the help of road safety organisations, ABI identified the main reasons why young drivers have a poor road safety record: a lack of road experience and an inclination to take unnecessary risks. They also looked at experience in other parts of the world in reducing the collision rates of young drivers, and put forward four proposals for the UK: • a 12-month minimum learning period; • a structured learning programme for all new drivers; • actions to encourage young drivers to carry fewer passengers; • actions to encourage fewer night-time journeys. Further research is now conducted into the factors behind young drivers’ poor safety record. New evidence, based on 8.5 million motor insurance policies for 2005 and 2006 and for policies involving one driver only, shows that: • Young drivers are much more likely to make a claim than other drivers; • Young drivers are more likely to be at fault in a collision for which they make a claim than other drivers; • When taking the same unnecessary risks as other drivers, such as speeding, young drivers are much more likely to cause a collision; • Lack of road experience has much more effect on young novice drivers than on other novice drivers; and has the greatest effect on young novice drivers in their first year of driving; • Carrying passengers increases the risk of a collision for a young driver, and the average number of passengers injured in a collision with a young driver is much higher than in a collision with another driver. (Author/publisher)
Abstract