RoSPA’s first Family Safety Week today (26 March) focuses on teens and young adults, and helping learner drivers.
RoSPA has launched Family Safety Week (24-28 March) in a bid to help people protect their loved ones from accidents which it describes as “the top cause of preventable death”. The week was launched by Martin Roberts, the star of BBC1’s Homes Under the Hammer, in Birmingham on 24 March.
Advice is available on the Family Safety Week website and each day has a different theme.
The website says that learner drivers have few accidents because they are always under supervision. But, once they pass their test and can drive unsupervised, their chances of crashing increase dramatically, especially in their first year of driving.
The site says that new drivers are more likely to be involved in high speed crashes, losing control of the vehicle, crashes in the dark and when overtaking and negotiating bends.
It advises parents to ensure that learner drivers gain as much supervised driving experience as possible, through a mixture of professional lessons and private practice, describing this as “a great way to reduce the chances of them crashing after they’ve passed their test”.
RoSPA’s Helping L Drivers website has been re-launched to tie in with Family Safety Week.
Tomorrow the focus will shift to adults and driving for work.
“The site says that new drivers are more likely to be involved in …”.
More likely than what? When they were supervised? Or more likely than more experienced drivers? Is that really a surprise? As with Hugh’s observation about the “unsafe vehicles in Scotland” item, the message in these news releases is sometimes not as clear as it could be.
Eric Bridgstock, Independent Road Safety Research, St Albans
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If new drivers are more likely to be involved in high speed crashes, losing control of the vehicle, crashing in the dark and when overtaking and negotiating bends then that rather suggests that their initial training in these matters might be somewhat deficient.
Duncan MacKillop, Stratford on Avon
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