KEY POINTS:
The Automobile Association and the Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven want tougher tests for young drivers - and a demerit-point system if they break their licence conditions.
The calls follow a bloody weekend on New Zealand roads, with three 15-year-old girls dying in one Christchurch crash, and another 15-year-old driver involved in the collision that killed Christchurch City counsellor and former paralympian Graham Condon.
The AA's motoring affairs general manager, Mike Noon, wanted tougher licence tests, a longer L-plate period and mandatory "attitudinal" training for young drivers.
The association wanted the time period a beginning driver held a learner licence to be doubled, from six months to 12. It advocated making the restricted licence test much tougher, to include assessment on eye-scanning and hazard detection, he said.
The AA also called for compulsory training about driving attitudes, self-assessment and driving with other traffic.
"We want to make better for them - a smoother path. We want to make sure they are very competent by the time they are driving solo," Mr Noon told NZPA.
He had also suggested a system of demerit points for drivers caught breaching licence conditions, rather than a system of fines that rapidly escalated into figures so high they became abstract.
"Something like a three-strikes system - get caught three times and you've lost your licence. If you get a $400 fine and you work at Maccas - that's just ridiculous. In a weekend, a young person could get 1200 bucks worth of fines. It's just insurmountable."
Mr Noon also said parents needed to know restricted licence - holders were still learning, and weren't allowed to carry passengers.
"If they are using your car, you have some control - you can say, if you are going to do that, you can't use it," he said.
However, he didn't want the licencing age to increase.
"Learning to drive is an absolutely essential life skill. We don't want to demonise young people."
Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven also rejected suggestions of raising the driving age to 16.
However he indicated several other changes around how learner licences operated were being looked at.
A major problem was young drivers breaking the terms of their learner licence by carrying friends in their car - often a key distracting factor in crashes, he told NZPA.
Options officials were looking into were young drivers being sent back to the start of the learner process for any breach of the rules or a system of demerits for breaking the rules.
Officials were also looking at further education to change young people's attitudes to driving.
Mr Duynhoven has previously advocated raising the driving age, but in May said research suggested raising the driving age would not make a difference, as it was a driver's experience, rather than their age which appeared the main factor in their safety record.
Today he reiterated that view.
The Government has rejected several calls in the past few years for the driving age to be raised.
- NZPA
