Spotting the most vital driving skill

“New” drivers, and especially young ones, are statistically at least 10 times more likely to have an accident than the rest of the motoring population. And the rest of the motoring population in Kenya is about 50 times more likely to have an accident than any motorist in countries with “safe” road records.

The new young driver here would be far safer with an air ticket to Damascus and an AK47 than a set of car keys.

The constructive question for parents is what can be done to reduce the risk. Call a taxi? Well, that should certainly be in the armoury of options.

Meanwhile, approach the problem on two distinct levels:

• How to reduce the chances of an accident. 

• How to reduce the level of injury in the event of an accident

Worst things first, because some accidents will happen no matter what you do. In injury prevention, the simplest and one of the best allies is the seat belt. It must go on before the engine is started, and stay on until the car is parked and the engine is off. No exceptions. Zero tolerance. By whatever means or manner your family uses to set limits of greatest importance, use them. Infraction should be unthinkable.

Ensuring the car is slow is probably not the answer. Even the most gutless jalopy can go fast enough to kill, and lack of power is actually harder to drive safely – overtaking requires more patience and judgement, and leads to risk-taking. In fact, the safer option would be a rally car – with a rollcage and double-harness safety belts.

The prevention of accidents is more vexed. For new/young drivers the car keys are not just something to work the ignition with. They are a winning goal in the last minute of a cup final; and you’ve all seen how scorers of those behave. Youngsters are not only likely to test the boundaries of that experience – they are physiologically and psychologically supposed to.

Physical control of the car and knowledge of the rules may be a problem for new drivers— young or older — to whom cars are an entirely new dimension.

But for those who have grown up as passengers in the family car, ridden bicycles and led a generally more cosmopolitan lifestyle, control and knowledge is not usually the main problem. In many instances the young are often physically more “capable” drivers than their older and wiser teachers. They have better visual acuity, faster reflexes, and good coordination and control. But they are less good spotting a traffic “situation” or assessing risk.

While advanced driver training can enhance performance in all these aspects – refining control skills, building awareness of anticipation and judgement of situations— no tuition can make a novice a veteran.

The area that makes the biggest difference is attitude. An old adage sums that up: youngsters assess risk in the belief that 99% of the time it will be okay. And they’re right. Older folk judge risk in the knowledge that 1% of the time it won’t be okay. And they’re right, too. A paramount driving skill is risk aversion.