Driving teenage supermen off the road

Road safety experts will use a conference next week to ramp up pressure on the Government to raise the driver licensing age.

Local Authority Traffic Institute president Andy Foster, who is organising the Wellington conference, said last night that international "best practice" showed a need to lift the minimum age to 17 or 18.

He said experts in Sweden, the Netherlands and Britain, countries which he described as world leaders in road safety, were aghast when told New Zealand youngsters were allowed to drive aged 15.

"They said we're crazy," he recalled of a study tour he and other institute representatives made after Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven challenged them at last year's conference to propose community-based initiatives for cutting the road toll to 300 by 2010.

"There are a lot of 15-year-old and 16-year-old 'supermen' out there who think they're invulnerable."

Prime Minister Helen Clark was not enthusiastic at her post-Cabinet press conference on Monday about a call from Mr Duynhoven for the minimum age to be lifted to 16.

He made the call after the road smash in Hastings on Friday night which killed four teenagers. Funerals for 17-year-olds Che Orbell-Pere and Michael Jefferies took place yesterday and funerals for Dylan Brittin, 16, and Alex Scales, 15, will be held today.

Helen Clark cited opposition from parents of teenagers worried about their safety if they had to wait at night for unreliable public transport.

Federated Farmers, which successfully resisted a move to raise the age in 1998, also warned yesterday against what new president Charlie Pedersen said would be a "knee-jerk" reaction to the latest tragedy.

"Increasing the minimum age would disadvantage thousands of responsible teenagers for no benefit," he said.

"While many New Zealanders' thoughts are with the families of the Hastings youths killed on Friday, raising the minimum driving age will not solve the problem of road deaths."

Mr Pedersen said international research evaluated before the introduction of graduated driver's licences seven years ago concluded that drivers were at greater risk in their early years behind the wheel regardless of their age.

He said the graduated system was generally very successful in ensuring youngsters were well-supervised initially, and under which the minimum age for the unrestricted right to drive was 17, or 16 1/2 for graduates of approved courses.

But Waikato University psychologist and road safety expert Dr Robert Isler said there were too many loopholes in the system, and international research showed that it took longer for young drivers to identify hazards.

"Their reflexes are good but they don't recognise hazards as fast as older drivers," he said.

Young drivers also tended to concentrate on looking directly ahead, rather than scanning widely for potential hazards.

Dr Isler, who is from Switzerland, where the minimum age for a learner licence is 18, cited Canadian research which found drivers aged between 16 and 19 had almost twice the number of crashes in their first month as those aged 20 and over.

Land Transport New Zealand statistics show that although just three 15-year-old drivers were involved in fatal crashes last year, the number jumped to 15 for 16-year-olds and 63 for those aged 17 to 19.

Spokesman Andy Knackstedt said the low number of 15-year-olds would have been because most could not drive without supervision.

Despite Helen Clark's caution about raising the age limit, a spokesman for Mr Duynhoven said a Ministry of Transport paper looking at ways to meet the 2010 road toll target "may well" look at driver licensing. The paper is expected to be ready in October.

Opposition transport spokesman Maurice Williamson, who was Transport Minister when the graduated licensing system was introduced, said he remained in favour of lifting the age.

Mr Williamson said it would take far more than raising the age to prevent teenage road deaths, but younger drivers remained far more vulnerable than their elders to being "egged on" by peer pressure to take risks.

Asked about the concern of rural voters that their teenagers may miss out on important after-school activities in the absence of evening bus services, he said the minimum age was higher throughout Australia, where there were far greater distances to travel.

Age limits

* New Zealand has one of the lowest minimum driving ages in the world - 15. It was set when the first national licensing system was introduced in 1925.

* This is believed to have been influenced by the rural economy, and a need to allow teenagers to drive to work, or to and from after-school activities.

* But the number of rural New Zealanders, according to Census information, has declined from about one in two in 1925 to one in seven now. Vehicle registrations have soared from 106,449 then to 3,159,304 in June this year.

* Most Australian states do not allow driving under 16, even if supervised. In ACT, those aged 15 years and nine months can start learning, although the earliest age at which a full licence can be issued there is 20.

* Learners' permits are issued to those as young as 14 in some states of the United States, and in Canada, but 16 is the more usual minimum elsewhere in those countries.

* In Britain, the minimum age is 17 but MPs are said to be considering raising it to 18 in line with European countries such as Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.