Safer driving brochure targets young drivers and parents

Inexperienced drivers on their restricted licence can have other road users diving for cover, but an initiative by Associate Prof. Sam Charlton of the Traffic and Road Safety (TARS) Research Group at the University of Waikato and the AA Driver Education Foundation aims to bring young drivers’ parents into the picture.

Dr Charlton has been working with the AA to develop a brochure for young drivers and their parents, based on one produced in Australia. Going Solo was launched in Parliament by the minister of transport, Steven Joyce, on 29th April.

Dr Charlton, who also lectures in the university’s Psychology Department, says the brochure aims to fill the information gap around the restricted licence.

 “There’s a perception that once young drivers get their restricted licence, they are safe on the roads,” he says.

“But actually a restricted licence just gives them permission to practise solo, and that first six months of the restricted licence is the most dangerous.

“Going Solo gives parents the chance to talk to their kids about what they can do together to keep safe in the first six months of driving solo and build safe driving habits that will last a lifetime.”

It is not Dr Charlton’s first foray into the fraught world of NZ’s roads. The research he has done on the dangers of using a cellphone when driving means he no longer does it himself.

Dr Charlton is currently working on a project called Self-Explaining Roads – using intuitive road designs that produce correct expectations and driving behaviours from road users – which is shortly to be trialled in an Auckland suburb.