A great many people are killed or seriously injured in road traffic with young novice drivers every year, which constitutes a major public health problem. Considering the rapid progress being made in developing different road safety measures, new knowledge must be spread more quickly and be put into application. Therefore, VTI and the University of Turku has carried out this literature review about young novice drivers, driver education and training on commission from the Swedish National Road Administration with additional funding from Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA). The review was carried out from January to April 2003. The aims were to review literature concerning: 1. Driving behaviour and accident involvement during the first years with a licence, including the underlying psychological and social processes as well as in-vehicle support systems and their implication for young, novice drivers. 2. Methods and incentives used to influence young drivers' attitudes and behaviour, with special attention to alcohol, seat belt use and speeding. 3. The impact of high school driver education on young novice drivers' safety. 4. The impact of different licensing systems on young novice drivers' safety. In all, this review contains 322 different references. As a result of the review, conclusions were drawn about the accident situation for young novice drivers, the different psychological, social and pedagogical processes that contribute to their driving behaviour and how their safety can be approved through driver education and other methods. The literature review has clearly shown that there is much knowledge about driver behaviour, road safety and educational methods that has not yet been applied in the Swedish driver education system. It is thus suggested that an experiment is launched where new methods and structures are tested on a large scale basis. If this is never done, it will be impossible to solve the road safety problems of young drivers. (Author/publisher) This report is also available electronically via Internet at http://www.vti.se/PDF/reports/R491A.pdf.
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