Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Geoff Upson: Road safety campaigner discusses young driver education

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Geoff Upson: Road safety campaigner discusses young driver education · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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  Speaker 1: New research from the AA Research Foundation this morning. They
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  Speaker 1: reckon young drivers are committing around forty percent fewer traffic
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  Speaker 1: offenses than are a decade ago. Offending rates for fifteen
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  Speaker 1: to nineteen year olds have fallen by forty one percent,
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  Speaker 1: drunk and drugged driving by fifty eight percent, and seat
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  Speaker 1: belt offenses by fifty two percent. Young driver fatalities are
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  Speaker 1: also down, but still above the OBBOCD average and above
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  Speaker 1: the older age groups here as well. Jeff Upson is
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  Speaker 1: a Rodney local board member and road safety campaigner with
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  Speaker 1: me this morning.
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  Speaker 2: Jeff, good, he he done?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah good, thank you. First of all, these numbers are good.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, we see the headlines about the boy racers,
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  Speaker 1: but actually on the whole they're behaving better than they
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  Speaker 1: were than I was ten years ago.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think, you know, we can't lump
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  Speaker 2: in the boy racers and all young drivers. But yeah, no,
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  Speaker 2: you're right in this statistic of fifty eight percent reduction
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  Speaker 2: and drink driving and young people. I mean, that's an
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  Speaker 2: amazing statistic. But we do need to be careful how
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  Speaker 2: we review statistics because that could just be drink driver testing.
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  Speaker 2: So so it's really important how we interpret the data,
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  Speaker 2: But if the statistics also show less crashes, then maybe
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  Speaker 2: that is a factual thing.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I mean the deaths, the fatalities are coming down, right,
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  Speaker 1: fatalities are down from twenty two point five per one
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  Speaker 1: hundred thousand to sixteen point six over that ten year period.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder what else we're looking at, you know,
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  Speaker 2: some of the other things that have created that data.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, is it the tires are getting better on cars?
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  Speaker 2: I mean, have we got better driver education now? I
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  Speaker 2: think driver education for young people is probably the most
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  Speaker 2: important thing, and it's important that we learn how to
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  Speaker 2: drive when we were younger. You know, it's a lot
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  Speaker 2: more difficult to learn things, you know, for you and
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  Speaker 2: I now than when we were at school an old.
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  Speaker 1: Dog new tricks. So one of the things that they've
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  Speaker 1: identified is they want this is AA. They want driver
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  Speaker 1: training to be well, the learner license period to go
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  Speaker 1: from six months to a year. And they reckon that,
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  Speaker 1: you know, the parents perhaps aren't spending enough time in
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  Speaker 1: the car with the kids. Something like seventeen percent of
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  Speaker 1: them are getting less than fifteen hours over that six
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  Speaker 1: month period of actual driving time.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not a lot of time at all. And
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  Speaker 2: The other thing is that if you're learning from your parents,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's great, but it's sometimes you pick
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  Speaker 2: up the bad habits and sometimes it's really important to
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  Speaker 2: have a professional driver trainer, at least for a small
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  Speaker 2: portion of your education process. And there's a lot of
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  Speaker 2: professional driver training courses, you know, Greek Murphy sponsors one
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  Speaker 2: that it's on the racetrack and you learn some particular
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  Speaker 2: special skills. Some of the most basic things are not
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  Speaker 2: being taught. You know, for example, what a tire footprint is.
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  Speaker 2: We are't going to it today, but maybe the listeners
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  Speaker 2: will google that later on and find out what that means.
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  Speaker 1: What can you just tell me because I actually don't know.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, so you look at the tire and you
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  Speaker 2: think it's a massive, big tire, but the tire footprint
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  Speaker 2: is the teeny tiny little part of that tire that's
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  Speaker 2: actually touching the road, and quite often that's about the
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  Speaker 2: size of your hand. So you know, you think you're
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  Speaker 2: driving one hundred or one hundred and ten kilometers along
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  Speaker 2: a wet road, but you've only got such a teeny
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  Speaker 2: tiny little bit of rubber actually keeping you going in
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  Speaker 2: a straight line.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, okay, but like Fred Finstone putting his foot down,
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  Speaker 1: it's not much. It's not much tread. Okay. So so
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  Speaker 1: you kind of agree with AA. You think there should
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  Speaker 1: be a more focus on training. Who taught you how
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  Speaker 1: to drive?
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  Speaker 2: Jeff? It was a mix I learned from watching watching
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  Speaker 2: Dad drive. I also had a lot of experience off road,
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  Speaker 2: you know, on farms, driving on gravel roads and driving
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  Speaker 2: der bikes. So I think I was quite lucky in
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  Speaker 2: that respect. But I did have some professional driver training
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  Speaker 2: and I did a team some driver training courses. There
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  Speaker 2: was a the company's gone bus now but it was
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  Speaker 2: called drive and that was like a full day event.
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  Speaker 2: Some in the classroom, some some behind the wheel and
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  Speaker 2: some of the some of the things that I learned
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  Speaker 2: doing that was invaluable. You know, you just can't learn
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  Speaker 2: it without actually doing something like that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I did the same thing, Jeff. Thank you very
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  Speaker 1: much for that. Jeff Upson, a Rodney Local board member,
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  Speaker 1: road safety campaigner.
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• 4:24
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