Austria reduces new driver deaths by 30%

[90 B]

Sounds like a good idea. Maybe an impossible task though?

You can give a young man as much training as you want but when he is behind the wheel of a motor full of his mates, he might want to show off that training?

Or just drive to fast.

You cant " teach " someone to be sensible.

[Alfanatic]

90 B said:

Sounds like a good idea. Maybe an impossible task though?

You can give a young man as much training as you want but when he is behind the wheel of a motor full of his mates, he might want to show off that training?

Or just drive to fast.

You cant " teach " someone to be sensible.

You are right, but you can teach them to be less likely to crash when they are showing off. And by that I mean more advanced training on observational skills and hazard recognition as well as skid control. You'll have fewer crashes if the driver has some idea what they're doing before they decide to impress their mates, so they have more chance of impressing them instead of burying them.

[R0G]

7mike said:

Presumably, this network of approved assessors would all be willing to work free of charge?
Or are you also proposing a change in the law?

change in law to allow for B assessing

[Xerstead]

R0G said:

Well we all learn - unless we are dead !!

Now you can do a legal 70 on a NSL single lane DUAL

Unless you're driving a van (or anything larger.)

On the other points, enforced, further training would be a benefit. Hazzard perception and observational lessons should give people more of an idea what to watch out for and when saying 'watch this...' really is a bad idea.

I'm not as convinsed with the power limiting idea though. Limiting a car to say 50mph still allows it to do that through town and on tight twisty roads, at night, with a car full of drunk friends.

Edited by Xerstead on Wednesday 4th April 20:36

[Oelholm]

In Denmark, one insurance company ran a weekend course on a track - "respect the speed", where participants brought their own cars and ran them on the track in various conditions and speeds, in return for a lower insurance premium. Reduced accident rates, too.

[crazy about cars]

Why don't we just raise the legal limit to drive a car to 21?

[DonkeyApple]

crazy about cars said:

Why don't we just raise the legal limit to drive a car to 21?

I guess that firstly most kids start work at 18. And secondly, at 21 they'll still have the need to drive like a dick when they first pass.

Just make the cars two seaters to remove the problem of a car full of kids.

But one way or another pricing them off the roads isn't the solution.

[otolith]

DonkeyApple said:

It's not really about knowing. It's about placing proven (if this is the case) high risk groups into vehicles which are cheaper to repair and are capable of less damage.

Add to that that it is a given that most lads when they pass will, regardless, spend a period afterwards 'hooning'. You are never going to stop this. It is just a given, so let them hoon in something relatively sluggish etc.

There is also plenty of real life experience and knowledge to be learnt in that period.

If kids can't afford insurance because the data suggests they crash a lot and these crashes are expensive then making it cheaper to crash is a logical step while also reducing the number of crashes.

If there is no data then the insurance companies are defrauding people.

If that's the case, why do you want to limit power rather than price? And surely, the young driver already has the option of choosing a cheaper car if he doesn't want to cover the costs of insuring a more expensive one. The reality is that the repair costs of young driver's cars is not a significant factor when compared with the personal injury costs of the people they mangle. Personally, I think the insurance system does a good job of keeping the highest risk drivers out of the highest risk cars, the only change I would make is to remove the anomaly by which anyone rich and stupid enough can pony up to drive anything. I would cap the price of the third party component of insurance and say that if you can't get cover for less than £x, you can't drive that car.

[MX7]

R0G said:

MX7 said:

I think we should have stricter tests. It costs stupid money to insure a new driver, and I think the money would be better spent on training people to drive than on charging stupid insurance premiums.

You cannot teach experience so how would they get around that problem for a new driver - thats the bit thats missing

I'll read the whole thread tomorrow, but in some of the Scandinavian countries they have to drive for over 100 hours before the test. As I understand it, they are also shown the dangers of crashing, much like our speed awareness courses, and are given experience of driving in poor conditions, and made to understand what to expect from a car when the conditions are less than ideal.

We don't really do any of that, and I suspect that that's one of the reasons why the premiums are so high. An extended learning period will produce better drivers with more experience. I'd prefer to see young people having to spend £2k on lessons, and £1k on insurance after they pass, than a few hundred on lessons, and many thousand on insurance for their first car.

Premiums are so high for a reason. It's because a lot of young people stack it.

[DonkeyApple]

otolith said:

If that's the case, why do you want to limit power rather than price? And surely, the young driver already has the option of choosing a cheaper car if he doesn't want to cover the costs of insuring a more expensive one. The reality is that the repair costs of young driver's cars is not a significant factor when compared with the personal injury costs of the people they mangle. Personally, I think the insurance system does a good job of keeping the highest risk drivers out of the highest risk cars, the only change I would make is to remove the anomaly by which anyone rich and stupid enough can pony up to drive anything. I would cap the price of the third party component of insurance and say that if you can't get cover for less than £x, you can't drive that car.

Limiting price of what though? The policy or the vehicle?

The key to reducing the cost of all policies is to reduce claims. I guess the majority of claims arise from either a theft or damage.

A vehicle which is designed to be cheap and easy to fix and not all that fast will go a long way to reducing the costs.

I you take a modern Fiesta and contrast it to that little boxy thing of the early 80s the difference is phenomenal. The later car is obviously safer but infinitely more expensive to repair and capable of far higher speeds.

It may be down to my personal beliefs but you can never stop teenagers from being dicks. No legislation or training or education will counter overwhelming genetic programming.

As such, instead of trying to change genetic structure it would be more prudent to simply accept this fact and create a system around it.

If it is the case that kids are being priced off the roads due to the cost of insurance then in the formula the kid element is not a variable but the vehicle element is. You can change the vehicle part of the formula.

[Jasandjules]

Marf said:

Agreed, also add motorway training.

Seems bonkers to me to train a driver everywhere except the busiest fastest roads in the country.

Indeed.

Plus it would be helpful to teach them to drive in the real world once they've passed their test, rather than how to pass the poxy test.

[R0G]

Jasandjules said:

.... it would be helpful to teach them to drive in the real world once they've passed their test, rather than how to pass the poxy test.

That is what the IAM does

The IAM test is approved by the DSA and although nothing else is DSA approved its logical that those getting associates to test standard must be doing their bit right otherwise loads would be failing the test

[otolith]

DonkeyApple said:

otolith said:

If that's the case, why do you want to limit power rather than price? And surely, the young driver already has the option of choosing a cheaper car if he doesn't want to cover the costs of insuring a more expensive one. The reality is that the repair costs of young driver's cars is not a significant factor when compared with the personal injury costs of the people they mangle. Personally, I think the insurance system does a good job of keeping the highest risk drivers out of the highest risk cars, the only change I would make is to remove the anomaly by which anyone rich and stupid enough can pony up to drive anything. I would cap the price of the third party component of insurance and say that if you can't get cover for less than £x, you can't drive that car.

Limiting price of what though? The policy or the vehicle?

The policy - specifically the third party liability aspect of it. If you pose such a high risk of causing damage to others that you can't get insured for less than the cap, you have to choose a different car, take some more training, wait until you are older, wait for the dangerous/drunk driving conviction to be spent or the points to drop off, etc. I don't care about the own car part of the insurance, that's their own business.

DonkeyApple said:

A vehicle which is designed to be cheap and easy to fix and not all that fast will go a long way to reducing the costs.

The problem is that they don't just damage their own car, they damage other people's cars and far more significantly, they damage other people's bodies. It's the personal injury aspect which is the big deal, not the cost of replacing a few panels on a Fiesta. Most young drivers drive cars which aren't worth much anyway, and most of them cannot save any significant amount of money by insuring third party only. The cost of repairing teenagers' cars is not the reason their insurance is expensive.

DonkeyApple said:

It may be down to my personal beliefs but you can never stop teenagers from being dicks. No legislation or training or education will counter overwhelming genetic programming.

I agree entirely. The thing is, the insurance premium is personalised to their individual circumstances. They already have the option to choose lower risk cars and they get lower premiums as a result - but even those premiums are still massive because the root cause of the risk is the nut behind the wheel and changing the car doesn't take that away.

[DonkeyApple]

otolith said:

DonkeyApple said:

otolith said:

If that's the case, why do you want to limit power rather than price? And surely, the young driver already has the option of choosing a cheaper car if he doesn't want to cover the costs of insuring a more expensive one. The reality is that the repair costs of young driver's cars is not a significant factor when compared with the personal injury costs of the people they mangle. Personally, I think the insurance system does a good job of keeping the highest risk drivers out of the highest risk cars, the only change I would make is to remove the anomaly by which anyone rich and stupid enough can pony up to drive anything. I would cap the price of the third party component of insurance and say that if you can't get cover for less than £x, you can't drive that car.

Limiting price of what though? The policy or the vehicle?

The policy - specifically the third party liability aspect of it. If you pose such a high risk of causing damage to others that you can't get insured for less than the cap, you have to choose a different car, take some more training, wait until you are older, wait for the dangerous/drunk driving conviction to be spent or the points to drop off, etc. I don't care about the own car part of the insurance, that's their own business.

DonkeyApple said:

A vehicle which is designed to be cheap and easy to fix and not all that fast will go a long way to reducing the costs.

The problem is that they don't just damage their own car, they damage other people's cars and far more significantly, they damage other people's bodies. It's the personal injury aspect which is the big deal, not the cost of replacing a few panels on a Fiesta. Most young drivers drive cars which aren't worth much anyway, and most of them cannot save any significant amount of money by insuring third party only. The cost of repairing teenagers' cars is not the reason their insurance is expensive.

DonkeyApple said:

It may be down to my personal beliefs but you can never stop teenagers from being dicks. No legislation or training or education will counter overwhelming genetic programming.

I agree entirely. The thing is, the insurance premium is personalised to their individual circumstances. They already have the option to choose lower risk cars and they get lower premiums as a result - but even those premiums are still massive because the root cause of the risk is the nut behind the wheel and changing the car doesn't take that away.

The car does play an important role though.

For example, if it is lighter and slower then it carries less mass and will do less damage, ergo incur less cost.

If it is designed sensibly then it will be cheaper to fix etc.

I think we need to focus on the stats a bit. The headline crashes are the ones where a car full of kids returning from the pub crashes and everyone dies. Can you eliminate or alleviate this? No. Is it something new? No.

The vast majority of crashes and where the true cost lies are those annoying fender benders.

If we look at the cost of repair for the typical type of crash it has become astronomical. Only a few years ago a modest crunch was repaired for a few hundred quid, today it is thousands. But why? Well it's down to the deliberate design of the car, some for safety but mostly to massively increase the bottom line of the after sales parts business.

Using common sense to produce a car which reverts to being dirt cheap to fix will assist in removing one of the largest costs of claims.

At the same time, using a very small, modern engine will remove mass and velocity from the vast number of incidents, again reducing the costs of average claims.

Imagine something the size of a Fiesta, but with polycarbonate panels and a small engine. When there is a modest prang there would be no respray costs as there would be no paint, no panel costs as they would deform and revert and considerably less damage to any other car involved.

And again, with clever design you end up with a product which would be easy to personalise etc.

But overall, the key is to look at the overall formula and accept what are constants and what are variables, and then look at how to change the variables.

[otolith]

Cars designed to do less damage to other people and cars would help reduce their premiums - but if there's a market for such things, I don't really see the need for compulsion. There is an issue in that kids often can't afford brand new cars, so they have to buy cars designed for other demographics after they've finished with them. There is also an issue in that smaller, lighter cars may be less crashworthy, which is not going to help with the cost of personal injury claims against the driver from his passengers. Nor is it likely to endear such cars to parent who are often helping fund the car and having an input into its choice.

Setting aside the personal injury side of matters, though, even a simple bit of paint and panel damage to a third party's car has the potential to cost the kid's insurer a fortune once you've factored in things like like-for-like hire car claims.