With deaths and crashes on the rise among young drivers, the controversy continues to rage on what is the best solution to this complex problem. We asked those at the forefront of the debate for their opinion.
With the NSW Ambulance Service for 16 years.
I’ve attended hundreds of crashes involving young drivers. Sometimes it’s obvious they’re dead and there’s no chance of doing anything. The finality and senselessness is terrible. It could have been avoided and you wonder what the parents are going to think and what could have been. There are times when parents run up to me and ask “what happened to my son or daughter?” You don’t have to say anything, they know from the look on your face.
I also teach at the Traffic Offenders Program and we show graphic footage [of crashes] to young drivers. But education has a limited place. I would encourage kids to drag race and let off steam in a safe environment than go to driving courses because there’s not a lot of evidence they make teenagers better drivers. I would rather see young drivers doing other things like joining a club. Those clubs have their own training sessions. I think young drivers could learn a lot more because it’s not just about controlling your car at speed, it’s about the mental approach, perceptual skills and recognising what might be dangerous.
Curfews are a great idea but I question the amenability. It’s a heavy handed restriction when you have to give people the freedom to get around. But maybe you do need to take drastic measures if the death toll is increasing. It’s no fun putting a teenager into a body bag.
Melinda Gauci: P-Plater, 19. Lives in the outer Sydney suburb of Glenorie, which has no trains and a limited bus service. She is now on her green P2 licence. Melinda learnt to drive with her parents and
had 10 lessons with an instructor. She is studying full-time and works four night a week at a local club.
Having a night job is convenient because I study during the day and then go to work in the evening. If I couldn’t drive at night, I’d have to work earlier shifts, or cut my shifts, and I would lose my income. I bought my car myself and I have to work to pay for it.
I don’t know how exemptions would work. Anybody could make up a reason. And where I live there isn’t much of a police presence on the roads, so how would they enforce it?
I do think restricting high-powered cars is good because it would help resist the temptation to speed, if you’ve got it you want to show it off. But I don’t think the sole passenger idea is practical because how would they police it?
I think everyone should be on their Ls for one year, whether they are 16 or not. It should be one rule for everybody. A three-point turn, reverse park and hill start don’t show if you’re a good or bad driver. It’s just too easy. Driver education in schools is a good place to start. After three boys from my school died in one [car] accident we were sent on a driving course. We also had disabled drivers, police and insurance people speak to us and we we’re given more education that included graphic footage of accidents. But it took the death of three people to get that education.
Rather than seeing driving as going from A to B [many young drivers] think they’re invincible, but I don’t think they think of the consequences, they just go for it at the time.
Anne Gauci: Melinda’s mother Works full time. She and her husband Frank have three other children aged 16-23.
A lot of young people here work and there are no buses at night, the train station is 20 minutes away and a taxi is too expensive. And it’s hard for parents to drive them around. If they could get exemptions, it might be okay. Or perhaps the curfew is just for their first year on P-plates. I think restricting P-platers to one passenger is fair enough, too. Melinda’s very good and drives to the limit.
She’s a safe, sensible driver. Still, it’s a worry. We always tell them to be careful and drive safely. But when a P-plater overtakes you on double lines and you see them speeding, you think, where are the police? We don’t have a lot of police in our area. I suppose they’ve got other things to do and it’s very hard for them.
There should definitely be more education in schools. If you’re going to have 50 hours with a driving school, it’s going to cost a lot of money. We taught them to drive, but they had professional lessons when it got close to going for their licence. We made sure we filled out the log book every time they went driving, but some kids don’t do the driving practice and just write anything. And they [young drivers] shouldn’t be allowed to have a high-powered car until they’re at least 25. Especially the young boys, they’re going to drive and have somebody else with them and they’re going to compete.
Geoff Long: Melinda Gauci’s bossManager, Galston Club, Galston
I employ around 30 young people and they all drive to work because we don’t have public transport close-by. I think most of them are safe drivers. Hospitality is often a night time occupation, particularly for people in the 18-to-22 age group who may be studying. If a night time curfew was introduced, they would all be affected and have trouble getting to work. I would have to sack my staff or even close the business. The sole passenger restriction would also affect my staff because some drive to work with three in one car.
Some kids will break the law, despite the regulations the government puts on them. They’ll just take their P-plates off and away they go. I think the responsibility rests with the individual to drive safely [but you need to] educate them to realise they have a potentially lethal weapon in their hands.
Julian Llewelyn: Senior Constable Julian Llewelyn works in the Traffic Services Branch. With the NSW Police Force for 15 years.
Once it’s become a police problem, it’s a long way down the line. To find an effective solution is to go a lot further back. Education should start before it gets to our stage. It’s unfortunate that all of this is an attempt at a quick fix when we’ve recognised traffic education has been deteriorating for a decade. It needs a long-term commitment rather than a knee-jerk reaction. Education should start in Year 9 or 10 and in conjunction with parents. My background is in the police driver training school. We started a young driver awareness program because we recognised the need for more education for young people.
It’s incredible to think parents are letting their kids drive in some of these [high-powered] cars. [But] limiting engine size is impossible to enforce and makes it hard for kids who drive 4WDs or utilities in rural areas. There aren’t the numbers of specialist traffic police in rural communities and … they have such a large area to cover.
[With curfews] it’s hard for police to determine if they come under a curfew, particularly when the easiest way out is not to display the P-plates. On the scale of priority, things like drink drivers are a higher priority. With curfews, we don’t want to restrict them. My son’s just got his Ps and he works some late nights in a part-time job. I don’t want to affect his ability to make money for himself.
I feel increasing the 50 hours would be putting more onus on the parents and … it might reinforce parents’ bad habits rather than educating them. I would prefer a pre-learner driver awareness workshop about what happens in a bad accident, which includes police, fire brigade and ambulance officers’ feedback. We actually have some [accident] videos that we show in a young offenders program. Presented in the right way, it reinforces what happens in a crash. For many young drivers, the introduction to driving is computer games, which don’t even show a vehicle being dented in a crash.
We prefer to instruct girls than guys because the girls don’t have an attitude, with guys, they are halfway through day two before they realise their capabilities.
Testing driving skills like night driving and in wet weather isn’t always easy. It’s hard to create those conditions, and it’s not a fair indicator of somebody’s skills to drive for 20 minutes down a predetermined route. The pre-learner and Right Start program [for motorcycles], is more practical and a good combination of theory and practical.
The driver training motto is ‘Skills, Knowledge, Attitude’. You need to improve knowledge, shape the right attitude and target driving skills.
If you’re missing one, something is going to go wrong.
Anne Morphett: NRMA policy advisor. Anne is working to give young drivers a voice in the debate.
Regarding night curfews, we have concerns about how certain individuals, like young drivers with children or those who need to drive at night for work or education, would be exempted. Many young people who have never intentionally broken the law say they would simply remove their P-plates if a curfew was introduced.
We have not seen evidence that restricting the use of powerful cars would have a road safety benefit. There are ‘anti-hoon’ laws in place for people who are driving those cars in a dangerous manner. It’s not necessary to punish all young drivers, only the ones doing the wrong thing.
An issue for proposing passenger restrictions is that NRMA supports designated driver programs. It took years to change the culture of the community to not drink and drive so having achieved a big road safety gain we don’t want to change the message. You need to ask, ‘is it safer to have three in three separate cars versus three in one car?’ While more passengers might mean more peer pressure to drive dangerously, we need to educate young people about those risks. Road safety relates to knowledge, risk and responsibilities.
Some of these proposals have been based on overseas research, for example restrictions introduced in New Zealand in 1997 are estimated to be directly responsible for a 10 per cent reduction in deaths and injuries.
It’s a different story here because we’re talking about placing restrictions on ‘adults’ who are 18 and can vote. The New Zealand restrictions took effect when people could get their licences at 15, were still at school and didn’t go to uni or have night jobs. The cultural differences need to be taken into consideration because what it boils down to is having local solutions for local problems.
We need to investigate the big differences between Australia and other countries where restrictions have been introduced. What were the social outcomes? Did it disadvantage people? Did people lose jobs? What other measures were in place, such as more police enforcement?
We also need to ask questions about road safety gains. If you’re looking at the statistics over a 10-year period, some of those road safety gains would have relied on police enforcement campaigns. Also, cars became safer in that period, with newer safety features like better seatbelts, airbags and better structural protection.
The government is suggesting placing restrictions on all young drivers, but a huge percentage of those in crashes are males. If restrictions are to be introduced, why not do it on a gender basis?
They must make sure they are a positive role model and not just when their kids are getting their L-plates. Kids notice what their parents do when they’re driving from when they’re very little, so parents need to be a good role model from day one. When their children are on their L-plates, they need to spend as much time as possible, not just the required 50 hours. Supervise them under all kinds of conditions, on all kinds of roads: in the wet, dry, urban roads and, on country roads, at night and in the day.
It’s important to foster a positive relationship so that parents can feel confident their children won’t be taking risks. Parents who have a good relationship and have modelled the right behaviour should be able to feel confident in trusting their kids.
The safest kind they can afford. Often parents give their children the oldest car in the family or encourage them to buy something that will get them from A to B, but safety is the most important thing. It’s about airbags plus vehicle structure. Higher powered cars often have better safety features than small cars so it’s a dilemma.
We’re looking at public transport. There is very little public transport in many parts of NSW, and a lot of young people, particularly young women don’t feel safe on public transport at night, even before 10pm. They still have to get home from the station and walk down a dark lane to get to their car. Focussing on public transport is not the only answer to this problem but it certainly is a factor.
Installing a speed limiter just for P-platers, that’s easy to remove once they’re off their P-plates, means it’s easy to remove any time. To be effective, it would have to be tamper-proof, which means it would have to be used with an electronic system in a modern vehicle, and not all young drivers have that. It also might make young drivers buy old cars with less safety features. And there’s the issue of community acceptance. Also, a speed limiter would have to be above the maximum speed limit, which is 110 km/h on a freeway, and most crashes happen in urban areas under 80 km/h. There needs to be more research on the implications and to gauge the level of community acceptance.
We are involved in a range of projects such as in-school education, with the NRMA SHIFT 2nd Gear CD-Rom going to all Year 9 and 10 students in 2005. The CD-Rom raises road safety issues at the pre-driver age. It challenges students behaviour as passengers and drivers, it looks at risk and it’s interactive. Also, we’re investigating the role of driver training and education. There must be ongoing support and education.
No one is happy about the proposed restrictions. At least 80 per cent of people who have participated in the focus groups have a reason to be out at night. Large numbers study and work, it isn’t just about their social life. All thought there was a real place for attitudinal education and many were interested in improving their car handling skills.
They felt there should be more education in schools at a time close to driving age. They would prefer to see tougher testing, which would be fairer, rather than punishing everybody by imposing restrictions. And they would rather see the police going after the drivers doing the wrong thing or make licensing tougher.
We are looking at how restrictions will impact on young drivers who take their friends to school, go to sporting events and jobs.
We’ll look at transport alternatives and ask them whether they feel safe on buses and trains and whether they have access to public transport.
It’s good that the paper has been released. NRMA is currently collating the information from a number of youth focus groups it has held and is running an online survey on the RTA proposals right through January.
NRMA wants to see the proposals considered in view of their road safety benefits as well as their financial and social impact on youth and their families. We hope that the government will address the needs of the people in regional areas where there is little or no public transport. NRMA’s response to the RTA proposals will be made public after 28 February 2005.
For more information on this complex issue, visit www.youngdrivers.com.au.
Q&A with Carl Scully, NSW Minister for roadsThe Open Road: The RTA has released a discussion paper on young drivers that puts forward a number of options. Are these options viable and potentially effective?
Carl Scully: I think all 11 options have the potential to save lives, but any changes the Government makes following the consultation process needs to have broad community support, be practical to implement and enforceable by police. It’s become obvious that some options have more support than others.
TOR: What about the more controversial options, such as curfews, passenger restrictions and restricting the use of high-powered cars?
CS: I’m glad that people have been talking about those three options, but there are others that may be equally effective and haven’t got the headlines those three have. I’d like people to think about all the options we’ve put forward such as changes to the demerit point structure, development of the Graduated Licensing Scheme, increasing the mandatory driving hours for Learners and increasing the age for P-plate licences to 18 years. But I do see a lot of problems with implementing night curfews, which seems unlikely to proceed.
TOR: Are long-term options like education the best solution?
CS: Education plays an important role and that’s why we teach safe and responsible driving skills as a compulsory part of the curriculum in government schools. Working with the community on the way forward is vital and that’s why we started this process of consultation to see what young people, parents and road safety experts have to say.
TOR: Should drink driving and speeding be a higher priority for police?
CS: With any new law, consideration has to be given to its enforceability. But in our society, the overwhelming majority of people comply with the law and no level of reform will change the behaviour of the small anti-social minority who don’t. I know there can’t be a police officer on every road stopping every vehicle, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put laws in place to protect the community.
TOR: NRMA says much of the RTA’s discussion paper is based on overseas or interstate research that may not be appropriate to NSW. What is your view on that?
CS: I make no apology for looking to other jurisdictions for new, fresh ideas that can save lives. Obviously, we need to look at those ideas in a NSW context and that’s something that the discussion paper is doing.
TOR: Do you believe car advertisements that portray drivers speeding or driving dangerously should be banned?
CS: I raised my concern about this with the Federal Government and the motor vehicle industry, which agreed to lift its game and introduced a tougher code of conduct.
TOR: What message would you give to young drivers who believe a crash won’t happen to them?
CS: Young people are so full of life and energy that sometimes they feel these tragedies only ever happen to someone else. Sadly, every year, too many families find out it can happen to them and I’d ask young people to think about that.
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