Accident rate reduced among young drivers that have completed SEAT Young Driver course

There have been frequent posts and discussions about young drivers these days. Should they be banned from driving at night, banned from having passengers, should it be compulsory for them to pass a driving course and if so, will it lower their insurance costs? SEAT, in their press release announcing details of their driver training programme/course called SEAT Young Driver, pointed out that Statistics from the Department for Transport show that two out of ten newly qualified drivers will crash within six months of passing the test,  and drivers aged 17-24 are involved in one in four incidents of serious injury or death on the road, despite accounting for one in eight full UK driving licences. It's the only driver training course of its type in the UK. It offers anyone aged between 11 and 17 years old the chance to get behind the wheel with a qualified ADI instructor and learn how to drive.

The pioneering SEAT Young Driver programme is proving to have a positive effect on accident rates among its participants. That’s the pleasing conclusion of research into the subject by Young Driver Training Ltd, the company behind SEAT Young Driver.

A survey among teenagers that have taken the groundbreaking driver training course has revealed that their accident rate is markedly reduced when compared to the overall rate of newly qualified drivers in the UK.

Kim Stanton, Marketing Director for Young Driver, said: “Our research, along with data from the Swedish Government, shows that training young people to drive at an early age when they’re much more receptive to road safety messages really could save hundreds of lives per year.”

Research undertaken for the Swedish Government found that establishing a minimum number of hours of pre-test driving experience slashed accidents among young drivers by 40%.⁴ SEAT Young Driver was set up in 2009 based on this research, and remains the only course of its type in the UK.

By the end of 2012 over 60,000 young people will have taken the SEAT Young Driver course, each of them equipped to go into their driving lessons at 17 having learned the fundamentals of driving. These lessons take place throughout the UK, from Southampton to Glasgow, at venues with facilities for driver training away from the public highway. Locations have included The NEC in Birmingham, Brent Cross in London and Metro Centre, Gateshead. The course includes the very basics of manoeuvring a car, to more complex, real-world skills like overtaking, using a roundabout and reverse parking.

I think this course is a fantastic idea, but I'm not so sure about 11 year olds being ready for such training. I can remember being a young first time driver myself (at 15 years old) and in addition to learning the basic driving skills, gaining the confidence to get behind the wheel was also a crucial part of my driving education. Do you think the age of 11 is too young to start taking a driving course, or is the earlier the better?

For more details and to read the entire press article, please click here.