The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) and the Department for Transport (DfT) recently put out a consultation paper seeking views on wide-ranging changes to driver education and testing.
Safex 2008, the biannual two-day Driver Education World Conference, recently took place in London for 200 delegates from all over the world such as long-term driver education practioners, and researchers, mainly academics. Both groups agree that basic car control can be learned well enough by most people to pass a driving test, but it is their failure to apply what they know that causes 90 percent of accidents thereafter.
Most young male fatalities are traceable to over-confidence, distraction, frustration, poor observation, revenge, competitiveness, showing-off etc, and these are psychological, not technological or physiological issues. These inexperienced drivers lack awareness or responsibility, usually both, and it is this that coaching seeks to address.
The Goals for Driver Education Matrix (GDE-Matrix), which is now being quite widely used, distinguishes four levels of learning: 1. vehicle controls and manoeuvring skills; 2. mastering the variety of traffic situations; 3. current journey-related attitudes and behaviours; 4. engrained lifestyle and risk-seeking attitudes.