Too many younger people are involved in RTCs (Road Traffic Collisions). This especially applies to those aged 17-24. The main reasons for this is a lack of experience, plus also a propensity to engage in more risky behaviour such as speeding, driving late at night, showing off to friends etc. While young drivers have some good things going for them, namely quicker reactions than older drivers, and fewer ingrained bad habits, it’s the sheer lack of experience and risky behaviour, which causes so many problems.

The infographic below, shows some very interesting facts around younger drivers.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/

You can quickly see the alarming statistics around younger drivers, especially with male drivers, who account for 75% of younger driver fatalities by gender. Younger drivers also drive a lot more at night. On average across all age groups just under 50% of fatal RTCs occur at night, which equates to a fatality rate of around 3 times that of daylight driving.

Training Younger Drivers – Benefits:

Helping them through the early years – Driver training for a younger driver will help them when they most need it – when they are new to driving, and at most risk.

Learning new skills – When a young driver takes driver training with us, they will learn advanced and defensive techniques, which in all probability they would not have ever come across before, and perhaps would never have, if they hadn’t invested in driver training. The average person will drive over 500,000 miles in their motoring career, most of which will never have the opportunity of mastering these lifesaving skills. What they learn with us should stay with them for the rest of their lives. A toolbox of techniques they can build into their everyday driving.

Insurance – While our courses currently do not directly provide a discount for insurance, which is the same generally for any advanced driving course. Learning skills, which leads to becoming a safer driver will often result in fewer collisions, which means fewer claims, a more impressive NCB record, and ultimately significant savings with insurance over the years. When you consider the costs of even a minor bump, and the resulting insurance implications (having to pay the insurance excess and the alarming rise in insurance costs the following year) the cost of our courses, while certainly not cheap can easily pay for themselves.

Boosting confidence – Not all younger drivers take our course drive too fast, or show off. In fact a large number take the course as they need a boost in confidence. This maybe due to them passing their driving test, and then not driving for a while, or have passed their test, drove for a while, maybe went to University where they didn’t drive for a while, and now need to get back to driving. As our courses are built to the needs of the driver, we can provide a course, which is biased towards a refresher if needed.

A younger driver course with elements of refresher training is quite different to that of a refresher course for an older driver. This course focuses more on leaving off where they started as a new driver, and if needed take more of a learner driver training session, before advancing it quickly to that of a full licence holder, where they learn these essential skills based around forward planning, observation, car control, commentary driving and more.

Dealing with a Past RTC / Driver Anxiety – Our younger driver courses are extremely popular with those who have had a RTC and need help. Sometimes it’s a minor bump, which has resulted in a lack of confidence, other times it’s following a serious RTC, where the young driver has been referred to us from their insurance company or medical practitioner.

Driver Outcomes & Resistance:

The vast majority of younger drivers taking our training both enjoy and benefit from the session/s. Some say it’s been worthwhile, other says it’s been truly life changing. Sadly a few will say they didn’t enjoy or benefit from it. Thankfully these people are in the very small minority.  If the course is being arranged by a parent/s then there can be initial resistance from their child – the driver who will receive the training. Some will say they don’t need it, others will recognise they need help, but are really anxious, even terrified about facing the idea of training. Whatever the issue it’s important to know that a resistance to change is inherent in all of us. We can work with you, and your child if there are any issues, which need addressing.

Our tutor will call before the training and have a chat with you. Before you book you can call or email us for an in depth chat about the specific issues you wish to discuss. We often use these notes from the initial phone call or email/s to help brief the tutor, to make sure they know as much as possible about the driver and how best we can help.

You can book online here

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