Effectiveness and Role of Driver Education and Training in a Graduated Licensing System

Abstract

Formal driver education/training programs exist in almost all jurisdictions around the world. They are generally accepted as an efficient and effective means for learning to drive, and, more importantly, for learning to drive safely, although empirical evidence for safety benefits is lacking. Recently, there has been a heightened interest in driver education/training, largely as a result of the adoption of graduated licensing in a few jurisdictions in North America and elsewhere. These jurisdictions have effectively elevated the status of driver education/training by integrating it into the licensing system. Implicitly, this suggests that driver education provides safety benefits. This article provides a contemporary review of the value of driver education/training, particularly in relation to new licensing systems such as graduated ones. The article examines the safety benefits of driver education/training and considers the merits of integrating driver education/training programs with new approaches to the licensing of young drivers.

Anticipating the content and circumstances of skill transfer: Unrealistic expectations of driver training and graduated licensing?

“…Other researchers have reached similar conclusions about the efficacy of current driver education and training (see Mayhew et al, 1998;Christie, 2001), and the emphasis in young driver safety interventions has shifted to licensing, to considerable effect where GDL is fully implemented and enforced (Williams, 2006). Detailed analyses of driver education have been funded by the EU (e.g.…”

Evaluation of Beginner Driver Education in Oregon

“…Despite having a very large sample of teen drivers randomly assigned to the new program, a condensed version of the new program containing only the minimum training required to obtain a license or to a control group, this investigation along with several subsequent re-analyses of the datasets failed to show a consistent positive effect of DE on collisions. In this regard, one re-analyses found a small significant effect of the condensed version compared to the control group [15] and, although one of the analyses in the original study reported that the new program was associated with fewer crashes in the first six months of driving, this positive result and other findings have been hotly contested in the literature on methodological grounds [7,16,17].…”

“…Although DE provides an efficient means to learn how to drive, until recently, past evaluations have generally failed to show that such formal programs produce safer drivers [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. This is the case in evaluations of the safety effects of DE that have been conducted internationally, and not just in the United States.…”

Hazard perception in novice and experienced drivers: The effects of sleepiness

“…In particular, one driving skill, hazard perception, has been associated both with novice/experienced differences (Horswill et al, 2008;McKenna & Crick, 1991;Milech, Glencross, & Hartley, 1989;Wallis & Horswill, 2007) and crash risk (Horswill & McKenna, 2004;Quimby, Maycock, Carter, Dixon, & Wall, 1986). Hazard perception requires scanning of the road environment, fixation on appropriate stimuli (Mayhew & Simpson, 1995), and a 'holistic' interpretation of the salience of hazards (Milech, Glencross, & Hartley, 1989). Hazard perception is therefore a multi-component cognitive skill that can improve with experience (Deery, 1999).…”