Young Drivers (Safety)

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I am grateful to have secured this important debate. I tried to do so having learned the tragic story of Emily Challen, a 17-year-old constituent of mine who was killed in a car accident this time last year. Her death has left a void in the lives of her parents and family that few of us can begin to imagine. I pay tribute to her parents, Keith and Jennifer, for their bravery and dignity in telling Emily’s story and in trying to ensure that some good comes of what their family have been through.

On 15 February 2013, Emily was travelling to school as one of three passengers in a car driven by an 18-year-old friend, when the car ran into the back of a stationary lorry on a slip road. Emily was pronounced dead at the scene. In a few short moments, her promising young life, and the happiness of many whose lives she touched and enriched, were extinguished.

We cannot, of course, undo what happened that day. What we can do, and what we should be doing, is to try to reduce the chances of what happened to the Challen family happening to anyone else. In short, how can driving be made safer for young drivers? What lessons can we learn from other jurisdictions where young drivers cannot simply pass their test and enjoy the same access to the road network as those who have been driving for years? How can we minimise the chance of other families having to suffer what the Challen family have been through?

Road crashes are one of the biggest unnatural causes of death for young people in the UK. The figures are appalling and they speak for themselves. Young drivers are involved in one in four fatal and serious crashes, despite making up only one in eight holders of driving licences. One in five new drivers has a crash within six months of passing their test, and we all know that young male drivers have much higher crash rates than young female drivers.

Why is that so? The reasons are not, perhaps, obscure, but they deserve restatement. As anyone who has been driving for a while knows, young people are more likely to take a number of the deadliest risks on our roads, including speeding, overtaking blind and not wearing a seat belt. Young drivers, especially young men, are more likely to seek thrills from driving fast and cornering at high speed than their older counterparts. Although young people quickly pick up the physical skills of driving and, as a result, feel they have mastered the art and are very confident about their abilities, that is simply an illusion. Young drivers drive unsafely, but they do so believing that they are in control.

Young drivers do all that when, as anyone who has been driving for years knows, although some hazards on the road are easy to identify, many are not. It often takes experience to notice the hidden hazards, and owing to inexperience, young people may be poor at noticing them and reacting in time to avoid them. The research indicates that, since driving is a new experience for young people, they tend to use most of their mental energy on the immediate tasks, such as gear-changing and steering, rather than on general observation of the potential hazards ahead. Inexperience means that they have a poorer ability to spot such hazards; youth means that they are particularly likely to take risks.

As hon. Members will know, that is not the end of the story. Perhaps most worryingly, young drivers are more likely to drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. So it is that drivers under the age of 25 have the highest incidence of failing a breath test after a crash. Any amount of alcohol in the bloodstream can affect a person’s ability to drive safely, as it impairs reaction times and affects the ability to judge speed and distance accurately. Alcohol or drugs, combined with a lack of experience on the roads, is therefore a particularly dangerous mixture.

Of particular concern to Mr and Mrs Challen, given the circumstances of Emily’s death, is the research that shows that having passengers in the car can cause even higher crash rates among young drivers. Peer pressure can encourage bad driving and result in drivers showing off to their passengers, as well as cause distraction. Research in the United States has shown that the already high crash rate for teenagers when driving alone is greatly increased when passengers are present. With two or more passengers, the fatal crash risk for 16 to 19-year-old drivers is more than five times greater than when they are driving alone.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for bringing this important matter to the House for consideration. Is he aware that between the hours of 2 am and 5 am, accidents among young people increase by 17%? Does he feel that the Government should perhaps consider a restriction on young drivers between 2 am and 5 am, to reduce accidents and improve safety?

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I was not aware of the specific figure that he has given, but I will certainly come on to what the Government might do, and what I—and indeed others—think they ought to do.

The Minister will, I suspect, know the figures I have given to the House, but neither this Government nor their predecessors have taken the action necessary to ensure the safety of young drivers on our roads, as well as that of those who travel with them and other road users. Why? I do not know. I want to hear tonight that the Minister and the Department for Transport will take a fresh look at the issue before more young lives are wiped out in an unnecessary and untimely fashion.

What can be done to make things safer? Although I accept there is a balance to be struck with social and work mobility for young people, the fact remains that we have to do something. I, and others such as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), have been extremely concerned that the Department has delayed its Green Paper on young driver safety, apparently indefinitely. Let me make it clear to my hon. Friend the Minister that not only is that not good enough, but he needs to tell the House why that decision has been taken and, frankly, either reverse it or face the consequences of not doing so, and what that will mean for death and serious injury to young drivers in the future.

Graduated driver licensing exists in many other countries, and at present I see no good reason for why it does not exist here. Exact requirements vary slightly, but the main aim, which any licensing system ought to share, remains the same: to build up the ability and experience of young drivers in stages on a structured basis, to minimise the risks that they face. That means limiting the exposure of new drivers to the dangerous situations I have mentioned. Novice drivers going through graduated driver licensing could be subjected to certain restrictions and conditions, including restrictions on the number of passengers they can carry, driving at night and alcohol consumption. A graduated licence system would also go hand in hand with road safety as a compulsory part of the national curriculum in schools, where we should be teaching young people about the risks that they face as novice drivers or young passengers and how to minimise them.

Presently, we allow eager young 17-year-olds to be out unsupervised on public roads exceptionally quickly. In the UK, drivers can go from never having driven at all to being fully licensed in months or even weeks. Each year, 50,000 17-year-olds pass their driving test with fewer than six months’ driving experience. That gives them very little time to develop experience while under the relative safety of some form of supervision.