Opinion: the right way to cease new drivers from crashing… by letting them have a (protected) crash

This column has lengthy advocated for smart, sensible measures to enhance driving requirements on British roads. And if we actually want to change into a safer, higher motoring nation, I feel everyone knows what must be achieved. We’d like someplace for our 17-year-old drivers to go and have a great crash.

As a result of, as each boardroom motivational poster proclaims, there is no such thing as a success with out failure. As people, we be taught and develop from our errors. To enhance, to flourish, we needs to be permitted to get issues incorrect for ourselves.

Simply not, as issues stand, while you’re studying to drive. On the journey from first getting behind the wheel to turning into a completely fledged motorist, getting it correctly, smashily incorrect merely isn’t inspired. Actually, it’s fairly strongly, actively discouraged.

Positive, you’re informed it’s a foul concept to stamp on the brakes midway spherical a hairpin bend. However experiencing firsthand precisely why it’s a foul concept, precisely how disconcerting it feels when 1,500kg of steel decides to depart the tarmac and chart its personal course via the undergrowth, could be very a lot not on the curriculum.

It is a pity. As a result of there’s no higher factor to place you off having a crash, than having a crash. A correct shunt is extremely instructional. On the age of 17, I made a decision, within the spirit of scientific journey, clearly, to have a reasonably substantial crash on a abandoned nation lane. This expertise taught me an essential life lesson: surprisingly tough to exit a automotive when it’s on its roof. And in addition: crashing, not a good suggestion. These learnings stayed with me. Within the twenty years since, I’ve had not more than a handful of largely smaller crashes, only a few of them ending the other way up.

And no, in fact we don’t need our nation’s new drivers testing the bounds of grip, and crumple zones, on public lanes. However that’s the purpose: with the intention to be a protected driver, you must understand how shut you’re attending to not being a protected driver. To be taught the place the road is between ‘every thing’s completely superb’ and ‘why has it out of the blue gone all quiet and likewise why am I travelling backwards in direction of that hedge’.

Which is why it’s time to create a protected, non-judgmental area for brand new drivers to go and have a great wholesome crash. Nothing excessive pace. I don’t need our nation’s 17-year-olds messing up their fastidiously curated hair and enamel. Only a good, huge, largely empty area the place they’ll take a automotive for a gentle-yet-reassuring thump into some Armco or perhaps a logging truck, to achieve a firsthand appreciation of why crashes are unhealthy.

I’m not saying a bunch of nervous new drivers, piloting bangers round a concrete area, crashing into one another at low pace, wouldn’t be an entertaining spectacle. I’m not saying I wouldn’t promote tickets. However that is about elevating driving requirements amongst our younger drivers. As Solar Tzu nearly undoubtedly as soon as stated, to be taught to not crash, we should first be taught to crash.