Let young kids behind the wheel of a car? The younger the better, say the experts. Samantha Laurie fastens her seatbelt
Take one high end automatic Range Rover Evoque. Add a 14-year-old dedicated acolyte of Xbox driving games. Then turn them loose in Surrey’s most rugged woodland and disaster is just a sharp turn away.
Or is it? In fact, with a calm instructor and a trusty set of dual controls, sitting in the back seat as your teenager navigates axle-twisting ditches – in a car considerably swisher and more powerful than your own – is less nail- biting than you might imagine.
We are at glorious Loseley Park, near Guildford, for Land Rover Start Off- Road: a scheme designed to give 11-17 year olds a chance to learn some of the control and techniques required for off- road driving. For all the fun and games, this is the tip of a serious iceberg: teaching youngsters how to drive before they hit the roads for real.
Kim Stanton, running the programme for Land Rover, is also a director of Young Driver Training, a company offering tuition to kids of around 10 or 11.
“One in five young drivers in the UK will have an accident within six months of passing their test,” she reveals. “The system isn’t working. There is no requirement for a minimum number of hours behind the wheel, while many will pass without any experience of night driving, motorway driving, slip roads or overtaking.”
Learning to drive earlier, insists Kim, leads to safer driving later. The company’s own research suggests that, among its own trainees, the crash rate is half the national average at just 11%.
“Why start teaching kids when they’re teenagers and most resistant to adult advice? It’s like music or languages – the younger the better.”
Evidence from Sweden supports this: extending the minimum amount of supervised driving to 120 hours led to a 40% lower crash rate for novice drivers. In Britain, the average number of supervised hours is 52. Moreover, some new drivers pass their test shortly after their 17th birthday with almost no on- road experience at all.
Young Driver Training, which takes drivers from 1.5 metres tall, has 38 sites across the UK – often large supermarket car parks recreated as roads with roundabouts and traffic lights – where its instructors teach not just the mechanics of handling a car, but much of the road awareness that will be needed later: two-way traffic, dealing with junctions and lights, anticipating the behaviour of other road users.
Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) sees such courses as part of a bigger picture of graduated licensing, with a minimum 12-month driving lesson period, curfews on night driving and restrictions on carrying passengers. Radical change is sorely needed: 17-19 year olds account for 12% of road deaths, even though they comprise only 1.5% of licence holders. Experience, attitude and gender are the three key issues, says RoSPA.
Logically, insurers too must surely come to see pre-driver training as a self-selecting option for those likely to become safer drivers. It’s a stretch to view the Loseley Park experience
in the same educational light, but for one particular youth it has sparked an interest in learning to drive. No more lean, mean Range Rovers though – just a little Skoda and a lot of cones in a local car park. And that’s no bad thing, I’d say.
There's a variety of young driver courses available in and around Surrey:
- Land Rover Start Off-Road £43 (30 mins), £80 (60 mins) or £119 (90 mins); sessions for 11-17 years at Loseley Park, Guildford on July 5, August 2 and September 13.
- AA runs sessions for 11-16 year olds (£69 for one hour) at various locations, including Chessington World of Adventures in November. theaa.com/driving-school/ driving-lessons.
- Young Driver Limited classes cost £35 (30 mins) or £65 (60 mins); sites include Uxbridge and Reading.
- Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy runs driving lessons for under 16s at the old Brooklands race track, Weybridge. Sessions cost £45 (30 mins); £85 (60 mins). The school also offers a 4x4 off-road experience.
- MGM Driving School runs courses for 14+ yrs at Dunsfold Aerodrome, near Cranleigh, home of the Top Gear track. £69 (60 mins).
