In this report, the term young novice drivers refers to 16-24 year old car drivers. Young novice drivers are over-represented in crashes. At its root the causes for this over-representation are their young age, lack of on-road experience, lifestyle and other factors such as risk-taking. The age factor has two interrelated components: a biological component (i.e., having a brain which has not yet completely matured) and a social component (youth culture, lifestyle). Lack of experience causes a high crash risk due to underdeveloped higher order driving skills like include hazard perception, risk awareness, and calibration. Young drivers can also be more easily distracted, cannot always resist peer pressure, are more often fatigued and drive at night more often than older drivers. Drink driving occurs almost as often with young drivers as with older ones, but it has a more detrimental effect on their driving capabilities. Furthermore, they drive more often than older drivers under the influence of illegal psychoactive substances such as cannabis.
The fact that young drivers drive often in older cars with fewer safety features contributes to their higher risk. Furthermore, they drive more often in circumstances that are difficult for all drivers, such as driving at night and driving with peers. In general, young male drivers have a higher crash risk than young female drivers but only in relation to the most severe crashes.
Given the severity of the problem, EU Member States have taken action, to varying degrees, to reduce young novice driver risk. There is no panacea that will resolve the problem entirely because driving skills tend to be impaired by a lack of experience and factors (like risk-taking tendencies) that are prevalent due to their young age. Moreover, not all young novice drivers are the same. There is evidence that the following measures can be effective:
- More emphasis on higher-order skill training and testing in driving licence systems such as hazard perception and risk awareness training.
- The inclusion in driving licence systems of a learner phase (driving while accompanied by an older more experienced driver) and an intermediate phase where young drivers are allowed to drive independently but with restrictions such as not driving with peers, not driving in the dark, and not with devices which can distract such as mobile phones even when they are ‘hands-free’.
- A lower BAC limit for young drivers provided it is thoroughly enforced.
