Driving test: Is it too easy?

Last year, young drivers were involved in around 37 per cent of all fatal road crashes and 37 per cent of all serious injury crashes. Photo / Bay of Plenty Times

Is it too easy to get a driver's licence in New Zealand?

The core evidence for the affirmative lies in two sets of statistics.

The first set shows we have a very high pass rate for driving licences - 82 per cent of aspiring new drivers pass the theory test (enabling them to get a learner's licence), while the pass rate is 81 per cent for both the practical tests of the restricted and full licences.

The second relates to our bloody road statistics.

"Oh yes, it is" Waikato University's traffic and road safety expert, Dr Robert Isler, replied when the Herald posed the question.

"The pass rate is very high. It's actually not really a challenge. We test manoeuvring skills but not the higher-level skills such as hazard detection, risk management, all that important stuff."

Isler is a senior psychology lecturer whose specialist fields are human performance and road safety. The higher skills he speaks of also include the ability to regulate emotions and to visually scan. Together they are referred to as "the lifesaving functions".

And for good reason.

These skills improve with age, but they also respond to specific training.

"A 15-year-old is always less safe than a 16-year-old regardless of experience and a 16-year-old less safe than a 17-year-old and that goes up to 25 years when age disappears as a risk factor," says Isler.

This is developmental. Those lifesaving functions are believed to be the domain of the frontal lobe, the slowest part of the brain to develop.

And that's believed to be a reason why we have this second set of statistics. Young drivers make up only 7 per cent of all drivers but account for 14 per cent of all crashes and, in the most serious of crashes, they are in the wrong four times out of five.

In the five years to last year, 79 people died in crashes in which a driver aged 15-19 was involved. And, in 83 per cent of those fatal crashes, the young driver was at fault.

Asked to nominate the biggest problem among young drivers, Isler responds: "overconfidence". "They over-rate their driving skills and under-rate the task of driving."

This, says Isler, leads them to think they can multi-task at the wheel. Text a friend, for example.

He is in favour of the ban on use of cellphones in vehicles but wants it broadened to hands-free too. "It's not so much the motorskills - the handling of the phone - but that talking on the phone diverts attention from the task of driving."

This is true for all ages, of course, but particularly so for young drivers because of the slow development of emotional regulation. Receiving an upsetting text while driving, for example, could have dire consequences.

If Isler had his way, he'd increase the driver age (which is out of step internationally), extend the period of supervised driving, give parents more help on how to supervise, and introduce computerised hazard detection tests, which are used in Europe. The latter can give a good indication, he says, of how much practice and experience a new driver has had and could be used to determine whether they are ready to drive solo.

New Zealand could look to Switzerland (driver age 18) and Germany (17) where up to 25 hours of professional tuition is mandatory before graduating to a full licence. None is required in this country.

Crash data shows the most dangerous time for novice drivers is the first six months they drive solo (the crash rate increases seven-fold).

Look at the Automobile Association website and you will find this paragraph prominently displayed: "It's a sad fact that all over the world young drivers have a high crash rate when they first start driving on their own. Out of 29 comparable countries, New Zealand has the second-to-highest death rate on average in the 15-24 age group. The main factors for young drivers who have crashes are inexperience and age."

Automobile Association motoring affairs general manager Mike Noon says the age debate should not obscure the basic problem, which is new drivers are not well enough trained.

Noon says we are failing our "duty of care" to prepare drivers by giving licences to those not ready. Double the time required to be spent on a supervised learner's licence, raise the required standard, fail more and novice drivers will be motivated to take professional lessons in order to get a licence, he says.

Australia recently authorised funding for one professional driving lesson for each licence applicant. On that note, Noon wonders whether the cost of lessons is a barrier to professional tuition for high-risk and poorer groups such as young Maori. A scheme - perhaps run through the Community Services Card - could encourage the less-well-off to have lessons.

It should be noted that Noon and Isler give our Graduated Driver Licence System the thumbs-up as a system (and statistics suggest it has helped reduce the road toll) but both say its conditions are too often flouted. And parents must cop some of the blame.

Our system has three levels. Once you pass the theory test, you get a learner's licence, which enables you to drive while supervised by someone who has held a full licence for a minimum of two years. After six months a driver can sit a practical test and gain a restricted licence which enables them to drive alone (except between 10pm and 5am) but not carry passengers.

After six months on a restricted licence (18 months for those under 25) the driver can sit the practical test for a full licence.

Isler says parents need to do their bit to ensure their child sticks to the conditions of their licence rather than leave it to the police. Parents also have a role deciding when their child starts driving rather than it being automatic at 15.

"It's not all about the rules, it's about parents taking responsibility."

He acknowledges that the most dangerously irresponsible kids often have grossly negligent parents. "We still need to regulate for those, absolutely."

Noon says parents often contribute to their child's first car and could therefore make its use conditional on them obeying the night and passenger restrictions. "Just putting the age up is not a panacea."

The penalty for breaching conditions is a $400 fine and 25 demerit points (licence is suspended for three months when 100 demerit points are accumulated within a two-year period). A bill before Parliament proposes reducing the fine to $100 and increasing demerit points to 35. The proposed change reflects evidence that demerit points are a stronger deterrent for young drivers as fines are ignored, often shared by all occupants of the car or paid by parents.

Overseas drivers are another category of interest. It is possible for drivers from a wide range of countries to never have their driving capabilities tested in New Zealand.

We recognise the licences of 22 countries (the United States, Japan and most Western European countries) which means their drivers don't have to sit New Zealand tests (theory or practical).

Anyone else who has a licence from their own country can drive for as long as they want here without having their skills checked by our licensing system, simply by leaving New Zealand once a year. Our system allows them to drive for a year without having to get a New Zealand licence but gives them a year each time they re-enter the country.

There is no way of knowing how many drivers in this category are on the road.

And, disturbingly, crash statistics record only the broadest ethnicities, making it impossible to know whether drivers from certain countries are more dangerous.

Transport authorities had no explanation for why such detailed research is not done.

As for the case that gaining a driver's licence is too hard?

We didn't find anyone pushing that argument. That instances of cheating and bribery occur may be anecdotal evidence that it is difficult for some - mainly new residents for whom English is a second language.

In 2005 a former police officer was convicted for receiving bribes for giving out about 100 licences without tests.

Following reports that driver licence fraud was rife, with cheats using dodgy interpreters to help them pass the theory test and stand-in drivers for the practical, Land Transport New Zealand explored employing an accredited pool of interpreters.

That was deemed to be too expensive. Instead, computerised theory tests are being introduced in nine languages other than English.

Moving to a computerised version of the test will also streamline the process, enabling questions to be compiled randomly from the road code, so no two tests are the same.

The tests are done on computer terminals being set up at driver licensing agencies.

The system was introduced in Wellington last week and is expected to be rolled out in Auckland next month and throughout the country by Christmas.

BEHIND THE WHEEL

Last year, young drivers were involved in around 37 per cent of all fatal road crashes and 37 per cent of all serious injury crashes. Crashes blamed on young drivers resulted in 122 deaths and 800 serious injuries in 2008. The social cost of these crashes was approximately $1.1 billion.

New Zealand's 15 to 17-year-olds have the highest road death rate in the OECD. For each young at-fault driver killed, 1.3 other road users also
die. Most people killed by young drivers are their own passengers, their peers. This is a key reason why road crashes are the single greatest killer of 15 to 24-year-olds, and the leading cause of their permanent injury. It also largely explains why our young people have a road fatality rate of 21 per 100,000 population — double New Zealand's overall rate. They are some of the world's youngest licensed drivers. The disturbing statistics raise
the question: is it too easy for teenage drivers to get behind the wheel?