Driver education: how effective?

Abstract

In the early 20th century, the numbers of motor vehicles in use grew rapidly in the USA, Canada, and many European countries. By the 1930s, the number of automobile crashes and the resulting deaths and injuries was a significant problem and various safety organizations tried to address it with education and publicity programs aimed at changing driver behaviour. It is not clear when the high crash risks of young drivers were first identified, but in the early 1930s driver education courses began to be offered in US high schools (feasible because US licensing ages were 16 or younger) and soon such courses were being touted (with no evidence) as ‘the most obvious way’ to reduce traffic crashes. Over the years many claims were made for the effectiveness of high school driver education, however, it was not until the late 1960s that competent research studies (including randomized control trials) were undertaken. The consistent findings from these studies have been that high school driver education does not reduce crashes. Furthermore, the trained students get their licenses sooner, and because teenagers have very high crash risks, the net result of high school driver education is increased numbers of crashes.

Keywords:

• Driver licensing
• crash risks by age
• teenage drivers
• randomized control studies
• graduated driver licensing

Notes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Allan Williams (the guru of young driver research) for his helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The reasons for the increases for older drivers in police-reported crashes relate to their decreasing abilities to handle traffic, and for fatal crashes their greater fragility means they are more likely to sustain injuries, such as complicated fractures, that would not be serious for younger drivers but can be fatal for the elderly.

2 This was the first reported finding that teen driver education accelerated licensure, and unlike many US states, in England licensure requirements were unrelated to driver education.

3 This 2001 review was edited in 2008 with no change to the conclusions and republished in Issue 4.

4 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/nts02-driving-licence-holders.

5 Note the misleading name of this group – The National Highway Safety Administration – which obviously will be confused with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

6 American Driver and Traffic Safety Education Association, Driving School Association of the Americas, and Driving Education and Training Administrators.