Young drivers lack safety knowledge

Nearly half of all young drivers believe they aren’t well enough prepared for driving.

According to research of 1,000 motorists aged 17-24, and 1,000 parents of young drivers, 47% of young drivers don’t believe they are taught enough about road safety. Road accidents are the biggest killer of young people, but this research reveals that up to 800,000 young motorists aren’t confident they have enough knowledge to drive safely.

Less than half of young road users know what the legal tyre tread limit is and one in five have no idea what solution, such as a spare tyre, they have available in an event of a puncture.

Just one in five young motorists do not know how to open their car bonnet and a third have no idea how to top up their screen wash. As agreed by young drivers, the top solutions for improving their safety and that of others are better education (70%), more enforcement such as harsher penalties (38%) and making routine safety checks a feature of the driving test (36%).

Mark Griffiths, safety expert at Continental Tyres, said, ‘Every day in the UK, around nine people die or are seriously injured from a road accident that involves a young car driver. It is vital for 17 to 24 year olds to receive adequate road safety information as they learn to drive, setting them up for a lifetime of safe motoring.’