Why The Learner Driver System Is Wrong

In 2007 the learner period more than doubled from 50 hours to 120 hours in NSW and Victoria, due to an increase in road fatalities among young drivers. But new research suggests these changes have done nothing to change road tolls.  

For almost 25 years, teenagers in New South Wales have been logging their driving hours, but with little evidence of the benefits until now.  

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On today’s Briefing, we speak to Dr Nathan Ketterwell from the University of Technology Sydney to find out why the learner driver system has little impact on driving safely on the roads, whether they should be scrapped, and what is needed instead. 

We found that there was no reduction in the probability of having a crash and years after becoming a non-supervise driver for people who are subject to that regime,”

Dr Ketterwell said.

Dr Kettlewell says that young drivers are more likely to become risk-takers and tend to crash a lot more in the short turn after they get their license.  

The main thing that I would urge policymakers to do is to affect new policy based on evidence. One of the big contributions of our studies was that we really worked hard to identify the effect of this policy change whilst isolating it from other things that are going on,”

he explained.

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