Mind over Motor

Do you think the 120 hours legislation for young drivers is a good thing? Think again ...

2011-09-01T17:13:00.000-07:00

Governments all around the world are currently racing to implement legislation forcing young drivers to have a minimum number of driving hours before they can graduate to a probationary driver's licence. Young drivers and their parents in many developed countries now need to complete log books and sign off on many hours of supervised driving before they're deemed fit to progress to P-Plates.

In Victoria, young drivers have to clock up 120 hours before being able to go for their P-Plates. In New South Wales and Queensland the number of hours required is slightly lower, but it's still a strict and important part of modern licence testing.

Nearly everybody thinks this is a good thing. It seems like a no-brainer - of course learner drivers should get a lot of driving experience before hitting the road alone, because this will give them the experience they'll need to survive those first dangerous years of driving. Right?

Well ... maybe not.

Let me first state that I absolutely get that this is a controversial thing to say, and may even be seen as subversive. It's not meant to be either. Minimum learner hours are extremely popular with (most) parents and other older drivers (although not with most young drivers themselves), so it's going to be hard for many to listen to an opposite view without bias. And I hate to burst the bubble of those who are in the middle of doing the hard yards with their own offspring to get the hours up. I'm also not against governments at all, and I believe that in most cases Victorian and Australian driver licensing authorities do a good job.

But just because they get a lot of it right doesn't mean they get everything right, and doesn't mean they should be protected from criticism, where and when it's warranted.

Despite the popularity of minimum learner hours, my experiences with around 3,000 to 5,000 young drivers a a year increasingly tell me that this issue isn't as simple as it first appears, and that in our rush to help young drivers be safer, we may actually be achieving the opposite.

Firstly, my instructors and I have noticed, over the past couple of years on our Motorvation driving courses, a tremendous increase in the number of young drivers attending our courses who are incredibly cocky and overconfident. These teenagers tell us flatly on the morning of their Motorvation Program that they don't need to be there because they've completed 80 hours, or 110 hours, or whatever magical number they believe makes them a great driver. They really believe they're now fantastic drivers, and their parents (and the authorities) reinforce this belief by praising young drivers for achieving lots of driving hours.

Nobody sees that while more driving experience should be a good thing, it ISN'T when it interacts poorly with a young driver's natural psychology. That is, when a young driver believes they're a better driver because they've done lots of driving hours. This creates (or increases) overconfidence, which increases risk-taking behaviour, which increases the likelihood of crashing (and of being killed or seriously injured).

If you don't believe me, compare how modern young P-Platers feel on the first day they get their licence with how anyone older than 25 (who didn't go through the minimum hours) felt. I got my licence more than 20 years ago and I distinctly remember the sense of awe and fear that I felt as I drove home after passing my licence test. I would have done - say - 20 hours tops of learning to drive before I went for my test, but I felt absolutely (and was told by everyone around me) that passing the test had not made me a good driver - in fact, that I had got my licence and this meant that I NOW NEEDED TO LEARN TO DRIVE SAFELY AND WELL.

All older drivers will remember feeling a version of this fear and responsibility. We drove extremely carefully as new P-Platers, because we knew that we didn't know it all.

This is the complete opposite of how modern P-Platers feel. They've done their 120 hours of driving, and everybody has told them that they're good drivers because of that, so they hit the road as P-Platers feeling invincible. And yes, maybe they do have more skills and experience than we had as youngsters. The trouble is, this extra experience is no match for the feeling these drivers have that they're bulletproof. They drive faster than is safe and take more risks (particularly now they have no parent in the car curbing their behaviour) and so the extra experience means nought.

In any case, all of their experience is in what we call 'Ordinary' driving skills (all the normal, everyday skills needed to operate a car), and none in the 'One-percenters' (knowing what cars do, and what to do about it, when emergencies occur), so if and when young drivers get into trouble after they're licensed, they have no more idea of what to do than they did on their very first day as a learner driver.

I agree that it seems crazy that teaching someone MORE can make their safety LESS, but it makes sense when you understand what is the most important thing young drivers need to be taught. It's not - perversely - the skills needed to operate a car. 10-year-olds can drive go-karts perfectly safely and well. The real skill young drivers desperately need is the skill of knowing what is dangerous on the roads and how to avoid it, and how their overconfidence generally causes them to mis-read this or fail to compensate for what is happening around them.

You can teach this skill and on our Motorvation courses we do just that, spending all our time these days trying desperately to REDUCE the confidence of young drivers, by showing them what they don't know about what will happen if they take risks and lose control. Nothing in the current licensing system does this, or even recognises it as a problem.

Don't believe me? Just take a look at youth road tolls - they're rising all over the world in places that have introduced minimum driver hours legislation.

The other big problem with this legislation (yes, there's more) is that it has created an underclass of young drivers who now have no hope of becoming licensed drivers. Any young person who doesn't have a committed parent or a suitable car in which to train for their licence simply can't get it. Talk about actually creating disadvantage and increasing the distance between rich and poor where it matters most - if poor young drivers can't drive, how will they get jobs or ever be functioning members of society?

To their credit, Victoria's Vicroads has recognised this problem and developed a program using volunteers to train disadvantaged young people. However, the program seems to be hopelessly inadequate and fraught with problems. It trains only a couple of thousand young drivers a year because of enormous costs and problems getting volunteer drivers (it's hard enough sitting in the passenger seat with your own learner driver, let alone committing to doing so with an unknown teenager) so tens of thousands of young drivers go without.

The do-gooders out there might say - good, keep these young people off the roads if they can't get their licence legally. Fair enough - except that (apart from the unspeakable unfairness of that viewpoint) it just isn't what happens. Many young drivers who feel hopeless about getting their licence legally tend to simply drive anyway. When we do courses in disadvataged or rural areas and I ask a class full of 17-year-olds who is driving on the roads without a licence, about half generally raise their hands. It's probably more but some are too careful to say so.

What's more, many do it with their parents' consent - if mum or dad are unemployed or need to get younger children to school or have a range of other issues, it's easier to just let Junior drive if they know they can't help him get a legal licence, rather than worry about the legalities of what they're doing. Sure, these young people eventually get caught driving unlicensed, but short of locking them up there is very little anyone can do to stop them doing it repeatedly. So they do.

In 'olden times', many disadvantaged young drivers had an uncle or an older mate who could help them get 10 or 20 hours of driving up so they could get a licence. That can't happen anymore, although many young drivers who don't want to drive illegally can also simply forge their logbooks, a practice that is impossible to stop.

The upshot of all of this is that all of us are now driving amongst many young drivers who've had even less experience and supervision than we had 20 to 30 years ago. They're also outside the system and are set up for a lifetime of being outside the law. It's not okay for them to drive illegally - obviously - but what else do we expect disadvataged young people to do?

I don't have all the answers to this issue, but I have a couple of ideas that would help.

Firstly, I believe the government has no right to introduce legislation that so seriously disadvantages so many young people who don't deserve a further kick in the guts, over and above what life has already dished out to them in being born into a poor or dysfunctional family. If governments can't provide the resources to enable ALL young drivers to easily obtain 120 hours of driving experience, they shouldn't require it at all.

If that's too difficult or expensive to achieve (and it is) then governments have to look at alternative ways to enable young drivers to start their driving careers as reasonably safe drivers. This is possible, if young drivers were required to complete courses that enabled them to quickly gain experience and an understanding of car behaviour without having to complete so many hours. I passionately believe that the course I operate - and perhaps there are others - is worth around 50 to 80 hours of driving experience for the average young driver. It takes a day, costs very little, and can be provided to young drivers anywhere in the country.

All that's needed to find out if I'm right is an injection of research funds into modern driver training methods. Driving courses such as the one I operate have never been researched properly, despite insurance statistics showing around 70 percent crash reductions in drivers trained. The research would cost a couple of million dollars - a drop in the ocean compared to the 16 BILLION dollars Australia spends on road trauma every year!

Until this research is done on many different types of training (not one at a time - too slow and if the research is negative you're back to square one), young driver crash risks will continue to rise.

It's not right, and it's not fair.

Two things you can't tell a man he's bad at ... Driving, and Sex ...

2011-03-29T23:20:00.000-07:00

Hi all ...

After my blog last week, I felt a bit bad for all the men (and teenage boys) out there.

I felt that what I wrote may have been seen as something of an attack on the male of the species ... and it truly wasn't meant that way. I love men! I've been married to the same one for 22 years and haven't got sick of him yet (not most of the time, anyway) and I have two sons whom I adore ... so disliking men even a little bit isn't on my radar.

What I was trying to get across is that I actually feel a bit sorry for (some) men, because they are, in many cases, much more caught up in their emotions when it comes to driving than most women are. It's almost totally unconscious behaviour (so I'm not attaching any blame), but it causes a lot of men to be a bit 'clouded' in their thinking around driving. The thing is, for most men driving = ego.

And this is where it DOES get to be my business, because when men lack clear thinking around driving, they fail to understand or implement the right actions to keep their sons safe when they start to drive.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

MALE ONE - this bloke loves his kids dearly ... almost as much as he loves cars. But because he's what we call a 'Dominant Driver' (in a nutshell, a confident driver) he demonstrates unsafe driving to his kids every day ... and they're soaking it all up, from the back seat of the car. So when THEY start to drive, many of them emulate his driving ... speeding (a little or a lot), talking on the phone (a little or a lot), and even more unwise behaviour such as driving over the .05 limit and so on. The problem with this guy is that he tells his 16 year olds NOT to drive like he does, and he thinks they're listening ... what he doesn't know is that as soon as they get in a car on their own, they're going to drive just like dear Papa ...

MALE TWO - this fella has all the attributes of Male One (see above), with an added twist. Not only is this bloke a very confident driver who's modelling incorrect behaviour to his kids, but he also believes his kids don't need training becauuse he can teach them everything they need to know to be safe. The problem with this approach is that what he's teaching is often outdated or just plain wrong - what we call a 'Grandpa Myth' (to be explained in a future blog - remind me if I forget!). So his kids become even more unsafe ... but not as unsafe as the sprogs belonging to ...

MALE THREE - this man has all of the above, but he also believes that what he needs to do is to get his kids, especially the rev-head ones, into motorsport or involved in advanced driver training, because this will teach them the skills they need to stay safe. He's right ... they will learn skills, but unfortunately they will also learn to be overconfident drivers, which leads to risk-taking driving behaviour, which leads to exactly what this man was trying to avoid ... the death or serious injury of one of his children.

All of these men mean well and are trying to do the right thing by their kids ... but because they are unwilling to listen to anyone else talk or teach about driving, they can never learn what they might be doing that might be wrong (even dangerous) for their kids. Their wives usually know something is seriously amiss (I talk to women like this all the time) and are terrified for their children, usually sons, who they know are way too confident and are going to get in trouble.

The answer? I wish I knew. I can't change men who won't listen, particularly as they would never listen to me. The only people I could hope to get to are their wives, because women can generally see what is happening and take steps to get their kids trained properly - which means changing their behaviour and slowing them down. So to all the mums out there - you're the one who can make your kids safer!

Having said that, I have met many magnificent men who are able to put their egos away because they love their kids so much, and who are willing to read a book, attend a course with their child or listen to the opinion of someone who has worked with tens of thousands of young drivers.

I know it's not easy for men to do this, because many are so caught up in ego when it comes to driving. The old joke is that you can't call a man a bad driver or a bad lover ...

The men who are able to focus on what their child needs rather than on their own feelings and ego are the real heroes in the lives of their kids, and these are the men I admire enormously.

I salute them.

She's A Good Driver ... For a Woman!

2011-03-23T13:39:00.001-07:00

I was so busy last week that I missed International Women's Day, which whizzed by in a flash. So it's taken me longer than it should have to get down on paper something about driving from a woman's point of view.

Specifically, from THIS woman's point of view, based on my past 22 years working in the advanced driving industry. I'm probably one of few women in the world who work in this field - and boy, (pun intended) it's been a bit of a bumpy ride!

For some reason that I've never been able to fully fathom, many - perhaps most - men are totally threatened by the idea of being taught or told anything about driving or cars by a woman. I've taught classes where the men in the room have walked out when they realised they were going to be instructed by someone without a penis, and others where they've stayed, but have refused to look at me, respond to my questions, or make any acknowledgement that I am there, for the entire duration of the seminar.

I've taught driving classes outside (teaching emergency braking skills, skid control and so on) where men put into my group have deliberately slunk off to another group run by a bloke, because the idea of taking lessons from me was so utterly appalling. At other times they've stayed, but done their best to prove their driving superiority over me by arguing with my instruction or claiming that my methods are wrong. Once, a trainee instructor was so out-of-sorts that he was being trained by (gasp!) a woman that he contradicted me in front of an entire group of clients - d'you think he got the job? (Answer - not while I'm still breathing ...)

The sexism I've experienced in my work has been so profound that in the early days of running my company I was forced to revert to my maiden name, becuase I worked in the business with my husband. When our surnames were the same, nobody took me seriously - I was treated as the 'little woman' behind my oh-so-clever partner/husband, considered generally only good enough to answer the phone and make the coffee ... and I'M the one with the two university degrees! But once I more-or-less hid the fact that we were married, things were better ... not great mind you, but not as totally dismissive or denigrating.

I've done interviews with print journalists where every one of my comments was written up as having been said by my partner ... and others where my name was not even mentioned in the final article even though I was the one interviewed. My books have been on TV shows with the author's name (mine) airbrushed out. I've turned up as 'J. Hill' to present at road safety conferences and had organisers look straight through me, because I'm in a skirt (and it's not a kilt). And I can't count the number of times my husband - as the owner of our business - has been invited to golf days, corporate hospitality at motor races, and other types of schmoozing that passes for tax-deductible business networking - but not me. It's daunting, but so obvious and so brazen that it's funny, too.

By the way - my husband is the most non-sexist person I know ... and he has been as mystified by other men's behaviour towards me as I am. Especially as I don't claim to be a world expert on the actual DRIVING part of driving, as it were, so I've never stepped on mens' toes in regards to their actual skills (not that there's anything wrong with that - google Danica Patrick, who can drive the pants off virtually any man alive). My area is the psychology and behaviour side of driving, where logic would dictate that a woman could and should be just as knowledgeable as a man. Well, according to the men of Australia ... nup!

Somewhat strangely, men's sexism in driving appears to be age-related. I work with around 5,000 teenagers a year in my driving classes, and have never come across a sexist one yet. Yet many of their (male) teachers can barely bear to be in the same room as me when I'm instructing their young charges. Not sure if our young men are better brought up (by their feminist mothers), if they're better at hiding their beliefs, or if this kind of belief in male driving superiority doesn't develop until boys are older. It's probably a combination of all three.

While working with males in this line of work can be challenging, I'm not whinging about my lot, because what I am rhoroughly proud of is the effect I have on teenage GIRLS. Trained from babyhood to be underconfident around anything to do with mechanical objects such as cars, they look at me and see female possibility. Not only can I talk about tyres and skidding with more authority and sense than their fathers, but I refuse to apologise for being female - in fact I tell them ('cos it's the truth) that most females are safer drivers than males, because they have better attitudes to start with and because they take instruction better. I believe many girls leave our courses thinking harder about what jobs they're fit for, and why the more interesting and exciting ones have traditionally been labelled 'men only'.

I hope so ... because opening doors for future young women is one of the most satisfying parts of my job ...

The First Day of the Rest of My Life ...

2011-03-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I've written two books, run courses in 5 countries, spoken at 5 road safety conferences, led more than 700 courses for young drivers, and spoken to more than 100 parent and teacher groups about young drivers ... but the issue still isn't getting the attention it deserves.

Still, more than 500 young drivers are dying and more than 25,000 are being injured each year on Australian roads (and that's not even mentioning the millions all around the world!) and nobody seems to have a solution. There is no more likely way to die than in a car crash ... and, yes, that even goes for people in war zones and places where AIDS is rampant. There is no other field of human endeavour where so many deaths and injuries would be accepted so complacently.

Oh, I know there are lots of people trying to do stuff ... but they are all so disjointed and working on different things.

The main problem is that everyone continues to look at what young drivers DO, rather than focus on who they ARE. Who they are is young people, living slightly crazy (sometimes very crazy) lives, with weird working and socialising hours, lots on their minds, and brains that aren't fully developed until they're in their mid-20's. Add to that that they're in old cars, and you have a recipe for driving mistakes ... and bad consequences from those mistakes.

I'll keep this short for a first timer ... but come back and see me sometime ... I know a lot about young drivers (learned at the coal face, not from a book or from my own suss opinions) and I might just save a life or two ...

... who knows, it might just be your child's!