Young Drivers' Safety
Motor vehicle accidents are the biggest killers for young people. In America, several states have tried to cut down the accident rates by introducing graduated driver licensing systems.
Norman Swan: While heart disease is what's most likely to kill you and me, the big killer in adolescence and the early 20s, especially in boys, is the motor car. Just putting the two together, adolescence and driving, is enough to strike cold terror in the heart of most parents.
In America, several States have tried to combat the problem of controlling young people at the wheel of a lethal weapon, by introducing what they call graduated licence schemes. These are where the young person has to go through quite a lot of hoops before getting a full licence.
It's far more than anything we do in Australia, but a set of papers published recently show a significant reduction in road deaths after the Americans introduced this system.
One of the studies came from Dr Jean Shope, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Jean Shope: The basic idea is that young people under 18 need to go through a graduated process that's actually three stages. The learner stage includes extensive supervision, usually with parents and we have a requirement for a minimum of 50 hours practice driving, including 10 hours at night. Then when they obtain their intermediate licence, there is a restriction on night driving, such that between midnight and five, they cannot drive unless again they're accompanied by a parent.
And another feature of graduated driver licensing is that competence is ensured by a good program of driver education, in our case a two-phase program, and written in road tests that need to be passed, and then if there is a ticket or a crash in a certain period of time, the youngster needs to remain at that level rather than graduate on to the next level.
Norman Swan: Are they plated for each level where the law compels them to have a plate on?
Jean Shope: No, Americans are kind of touchy about visible labelling, and we don't have anything that would identify the learner driver that shows on the car. It should just show in their driver licence that they might carry in their wallet.
Norman Swan: How many tests do they actually do? It wasn't clear from what you told me there.
Jean Shope: They need to pass their driver education lessons, which is 20 hours in classroom and six hours behind the wheel.
Norman Swan: So these are formal classes that they do, provided by the State, or private companies?
Jean Shope: The driver education is formal, sometimes it's provided through the public school system, or it's also provided by commercial driver education.
Norman Swan: And they have to have six on-the-road lessons from a driving school?
Jean Shope: Right.
Norman Swan: There are quite a few States now aren't there with graduated driver licensing?
Jean Shope: There are quite a few States that have enacted a three-stage driver licensing program. Thirty-two in fact, plus the District of Columbia. But most of those have not yet begun their implementation. So Michigan was actually the first State to have such a comprehensive program. The program began in April of 1997, and it's actually taking us until now to have enough young drivers through the new system, and the data available to look at their crash record.
Norman Swan: And what did you find? What's the before and after look like?
Jean Shope: Well our before and after was done comparing 1996 with 1999 crash data, and we found that for 16-year-old drivers all crashes were reduced in that period of time by 25%.
Norman Swan: There's a well-worn phrase in road crashes, that if you stopped boys driving until they 25, the fatal road crash fatality rates would come down by about 50% or 60%. Given that statistics around the world show that the older the driver, the safer the driver, is there any evidence from the study that the new licensing program made people go for a licence later because they couldn't be bothered with it, and they'd wait a year and therefore you've got fewer 16-year-old drivers on the road. And that's why the crash rate's gone down.
Jean Shope: That's a good speculation, and we did look at that, and we do have a smaller percentage of 16-year-olds in our population licensed in '99 compared to '96. So that may account for some of the reduction. We also looked at the age at which they obtained their 16-year-old-licence that would allow them to drive independently, so it was either the old licence in '96 or in 1999 it was the level 2 licence. And there we found about a one month change to being one month older than they used to be to obtain a licence to drive independently. So we'll continue to watch that.
Norman Swan: So it's not going to account for much of a difference?
Jean Shope: I think not very much, but time will tell. We need to study that more.
Norman Swan: And given that some of your colleagues, particularly at Johns Hopkins have found that one of the strongest correlations of the risk of a road crash in a young driver is how many people of the same age are in the car with him or her, usually him, what restrictions have you put on passengers?
Jean Shope: Well in Michigan when this law was being tossed about, a passenger restriction was discussed, but at that time there wasn't a lot of evidence in the literature to support that. Now, as you say, from Johns Hopkins, we have very clear evidence that an increased number of passengers and younger passengers, i.e. other teenagers, make a crash more likely. In Michigan we will be looking at the passengers that were in the car during these crashes, and we think our State legislators will be interested in considering whether this is a feature that might be added to the law to make it more safe for the young drivers. There is one important feature of graduated licensing that I'd like to remind people of, and that is the extremely important role that parents play in their young drivers' driving career. Young people are actually watching and learning from their parents, from the time they're sitting in a child safety seat, and the way the parent drives is often how the young person will drive. Then when the young person is ready to learn to drive, parents obviously are a big help, and as the young person gets their own licence, parents have a very important role in judging the extent to which this new young driver is ready to handle the various situations. So they can continue to monitor and restrict driving when they think the youngster isn't ready yet for certain situations, and that is really important, with or without graduated licensing.
Norman Swan: Dr Jean Shope is in the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Shope JT et al. Graduated Driver Licensing in Michigan.JAMA, October 3, 2001 - Vol. 286, No. 13, pp 1593-1598
Well, what do Australian 16 and 17-year olds think of a tougher licensing scheme than our current system. Vanessa Findlay went out to a High School to put the question.
Boy: It's a bit unreasonable. I think just actually providing teaching for learners more than restricting their road use, because they need the experience, otherwise they'll never get to be any good.
Boy: Some restrictions as to limiting the number of people who can be in cars and maybe tighter speed restrictions, but I think the ones in place now are generally good. I believe the system could be improved a great deal more by placing people in situations where they have to be able to control the car to avoid accidents occurring, especially in wet conditions, and heavily congested traffic conditions. The power of the cars people drive should be restricted like in motor bikes they're restricted to 250 ccs.
Girl: I don't really approve of having more difficult tests for drivers, young drivers getting their license. I think what's going on now is perfectly fine, I don't think it needs to be improved in any way.
Girl: I don't know if I totally agree with that. I think they could make the tests maybe a bit harder, but they go too far when they do.
Norman Swan: But resistance from young drivers notwithstanding, if there's evidence that a tougher graduated licence scheme saves lives, why wouldn't we introduce it here?
Professor Jack McLean is one of our leading experts in this field. He's in the Road Accident Research Unit at the University of Adelaide.
Jack McLean: All States in Australia have something that's called graduated licensing. It varies a little but I think I'm correct in saying that all States have kids on a Learner's permit, and then there is some restriction for one or more years after they get a Provisional licence, and the restriction, the most common one, is the restriction on consuming alcohol before driving, a blood alcohol limit. And some States have a restriction on the maximum speed that a P-plate driver can drive on the open road.
Norman Swan: That's been brought in, before we get to the American situation which is a lot stricter than that, what evidence have we got in Australia that that form of graduated licensing which really is just Provisional plates for a year, New South Wales I think is three years, and as you say a restriction on misdemeanours on the road and on alcohol; what evidence is there that that actually reduces the crash rate?
Jack McLean: Very little, virtually none I would say.
Norman Swan: So why did we introduce the P-plate system in Australia?
Jack McLean: Probably because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Norman Swan: When is the most risky period?
Jack McLean: The best research evidence comes from the United States, and I doubt that American teenagers when driving, behave much differently from Australians. The first month of driving alone, that is on a P-plate, is extraordinarily dangerous, and the first six months are pretty bad news. After that, things start to calm down. They're still at higher risk than an older experienced driver.
Norman Swan: What does bad news look like, I mean what are you talking about?
Jack McLean: With reference to the United States data, the death rates for kids aged 16 to 19 per 100,000 population is around 16 deaths. For drivers 20 years of age or older, it's about 10, so over that four year age period when kids are learning to drive, the risk of being killed in a crash is 60% greater than for older drivers.
Norman Swan: So why don't we simply just stop kids driving till they're 18?
Jack McLean: The arguments for and against restricting driving, stopping kids, not allowing kids to drive until they're a bit older, is that they're still going to be wanting to go out and instead of driving themselves, they'll be driven by another kid probably, albeit a year older, and also an argument that insofar as the legal drinking age is 18, it is thought though perhaps not well substantiated, that it is thought that there is merit in kids learning to drive before they learn to drink on the naïve belief that the two are separate.
Norman Swan: Well let's now go to the United States, because the United States in 30 different States now, and these two papers, one of which we've just heard from the United States, has found significant reductions in the risk of road crashes in that young age group, with a proper graduated licensing system which (well 'proper' is perhaps the wrong word to use, it's judgmental) but their system which involves not driving after 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock at night, so a restriction on night-time driving, and a restriction on passengers in the car, which my understanding is from Johns Hopkins University studies, that the number of passengers in the car is directly related to the risk of a road fatality. What do you think about introducing a much more rigid system like that in Australia?
Jack McLean: Well I guess the two stages, first of all publicising the fact that that phenomenon exists would be the first point. And then possibly leading to a regulation. But certainly the Johns Hopkins work and other work has shown that the presence of one passenger, here we're talking about a teenage passenger in a car driven by a teenage driver, the presence of one passenger almost doubles the fatal crash risk compared with driving alone. With two or more passengers, the fatal crash risk was five times as high. Now they're huge differences. New Zealand, interestingly enough, has had a regulation limiting the number of passengers with a teenage driver, and that's been found to be beneficial even though it's very largely ignored. But if you've got something that can increase the risk by five times, if you can restrict or discourage even a small proportion of kids who would otherwise carry that many passengers from doing so, it's potentially a very effective counter measure for death and injury.
Norman Swan: So you would recommend it for the Australian situation?
Jack McLean: I would certainly recommend publicising the fact widely, and then if it were thought to be something that State legislative parliaments were prepared to run with, to consider including it as one of the restrictions on a provisional driver's licence.
Norman Swan: And night-time driving?
Jack McLean: Night-time driving also, and this has been something that's been in existence for many years in some States of the United States, those restrictions have been shown to be beneficial.
Norman Swan: And just moving off the graduated licence story for a moment, you also believe that the type of car is an issue here when you're considering road safety and your teenage children.
Jack McLean: Yes I think potentially the type of car that kids drive is probably one of the most important factors, and the one most amenable to change. Typically if young kids are going to buy their own first car, one of the rites of passage, they don't have much money so they go and buy a cheap, old, small car, which are far and far away the most dangerous vehicles on our roads, as far as crash protection of the occupants is concerned. And so if a kid is going to go out and buy a car, they should be encouraged to buy a cheap, old, large car, even though it's going to cost them more to run on petrol, the difference in crash protection is very considerable. The one characteristic of the car that determines how safe you are if you're involved in a crash in it, is how big it is. I frequently hear parents say that 'We're going to help David buy a cheap, small car, so he can get to uni. David should be driving the family car with the airbags and the parents driving the cheap, small car. Because David is the one at high risk of being hurt.
Norman Swan: Teenage Volvo drivers, here we come. Professor Jack McLean is in the Road Accident Research Unit at the University of Adelaide.
I'm Norman Swan and you've been listening to The Health Report.
Next week on The Health Report, deep brain stimulation.
- Dr. Jean Shope
- University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute,
2901 Baxter Rd.,
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2150
- Professor Jack McLean
Road Accident Research Unit,
Adelaide University, SA 5005
- Dr Norman Swan
- Brigitte Seega