Raising driving age wrong route to cutting crashes

From August 1, 15-year-olds were no longer allowed to get behind the wheel of a car. Instead, we have to wait until we turn 16 before getting a learner's licence. What is the sense of this?

Maturity is not the real issue. It is more about the way we learn to drive in the first place and our attitudes once we have a restricted licence. Raising the age will not reduce road accidents.

The government has raised the driving age because it says young drivers have become a lethal statistic, with 67 deaths and 506 serious injuries in crashes in the year to last September involving at least one driver aged between 15 and 19. But will waiting a year suddenly mean we become safer drivers?

It's more likely that the accident statistics will just involve drivers aged between 16 and 20. The way we learn to drive is more important than the age at which we start. In New Zealand, most people learn from their parents, friends or another relative.

All these people think because they have been driving for years that they can pass on their skills and there's no point in paying for a professional instructor. This is one of the few situations in life that parents think they are good enough to teach their children.

Most parents wouldn't teach their children piano or dancing or rugby once the child gets to a serious level - and there are few things more serious than being in control of a car.

Yet very few New Zealanders will pay for driving lessons from an expert.

Yes, of course, some parents are sufficiently skilled to teach their children how to drive. But most will only teach their children enough to pass their restricted, not how to drive safely for life, and often pass on the bad habits developed during their years of driving.

In New Zealand, many of us assume that passing the restricted driving test means a teenager is ready to go it alone. But really, passing the first test is only the beginning.

Teaching people to drive doesn't just involve practical skills. Drivers also need to understand the mental skills required to be a safe driver.

Things such as assessing yourself, reading the road, resisting peer pressure, managing distractions and planning ahead are all vital skills for safe driving. Learning to drive when you are 16 instead of 15 is not going to make a major change to a new driver's ability to develop these skills.

It's when they graduate from a learner to a restricted licence that teens are at the greatest risk of being involved in a crash: drivers on a restricted licence are more than four times as likely to have a crash than learner drivers - and this risk is even greater in the first six months after getting a restricted licence.

At 15, we had one of the lowest driving ages in the OECD, but our 15-to-17-year-old drivers had the OECD's highest road death rate.

So really, what difference is raising the driving age to 16 going to make? Clearly, one year's difference is not going to drastically increase a new driver's maturity, or their attitude towards learning to drive, or the way they drive once they have got their restricted licence.

Sophie Barnard, Year 10, Aquinas College, Tauranga