When parents are effectively equipped and engaged, they can exert a sustained, positive and measurable influence on young driver risk far beyond the supervised learning phase.
That’s the headline finding of a new study, carried out by Dr Elizabeth Box, research director at the RAC Foundation.
Supporting young drivers to stay safe in the critical early months after they pass their test, whilst they are at disproportionate risk, is a huge challenge, but one which is under-addressed.
In recent years, decades even, there has been much debate about protecting new young drivers and other road users through a system of progressive or graduated driver licensing which is relatively common abroad though no government has committed to implementing this type of the scheme in Great Britain.
But this rapid evidence review shows that there is a resource that can make a contribution to improving safety if only it was better utilised: parents and guardians.
The evidence base demonstrates that:
- Parents’ influence extends deep into the first years of independent driving, a period consistently linked to the highest crash risk.
- Parental supervision, rule setting, modelling, and vehicle access decisions all shape exposure to risk and the consolidation of safe driving behaviours.
- Structured, well-designed interventions, from parent coaching to feedback-based telematics, have been effective in broadening the range of driving situations young drivers experience during practice, enhancing hazard perception and promoting safer independent driving.
- Crucially, these interventions work most effectively alongside, not instead of, licensing frameworks such as GDL, enabling parents to reinforce licensing conditions in everyday decision making at home.
The study shows that Great Britain lags behind international counterparts in developing coordinated national programmes to empower parents and guardians as safety partners.
While Denmark, the US, Australia, Israel and other countries have trialled and embedded parental engagement frameworks, the report notes the system in Great Britain continues to rely heavily on informal, variable levels of parental involvement, often without guidance, support or integration into broader licensing and training structures.
The report finds that investing in parental engagement offers an immediate, pragmatic and evidence-based route to improving young driver safety. Leveraging parental involvement offers an opportunity to deliver meaningful safety benefits, but it does not remove the need for systemic change, it adds.
The report reads: “The policy opportunity is immediate and clear: strengthen, resource and embed parental engagement within Great Britain’s young driver safety system, using proven models adapted to local conditions.
“This is not a call for large-scale new spending, but for a targeted redirection and amplification of safety efforts, leveraging a highly motivated group of safety partners. The evidence base leaves little justification for continued inaction.”
Comment on this story