Accident Statistics

The parents' campaign for safe driving tuition

This first series of graphs shows accident statistics in the United Kingdom only.
There follows a graphic representation of some of the factors which influence driving behaviour.
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This graph demonstrates that the level of death and injury in this country has reduced very slowly over the last 5 years (for which we have figures).
The very slight improvement is markedly at odds with official complacency and provisional figures for 2004 actually show an increase in fatalities.
However one factor should be mentioned, the number of miles driven by motorists has also increased, so the ratio of casualties to miles driven has improved.

This graph produced from Department of Transport figures shows
that young drivers represent just over 3% of the driving population.
This should be related to the next graph on Young Driver casualties.

This graph relates to the previous Graph and shows the proportion of young drivers involved in accidents compared to the whole driving population.
It forms the basis of the message which underpins all accident prevention relating to young drivers:
Young Drivers form just over 3% of the licenced population but have 19.3% of fatal and serious accidents.

This graph illustrates two trends. First that older candidates find it progressively more difficult to pass the driving test, secondly, for any age group, males pass more easily.

This graph relates injury accidents to age and again shows that that young drivers have more injury accidents. It also shows that males of most ages have a higher accident frequency than females.
This can be compared with the next slide on accident rates related to miles driven.

The difference in accident involvement between the sexes is almost entirely accounted for by the higher annual mileage of males.
However further analysis shows that the fatal accident rate of young men is twice that of young women, reflecting the higher average speeds in accidents involving young men.

Accident liability clearly reduces with increasing age. The young are known to take more risks.However, in the early post-test years, it would seem that gaining experience rather than getting older , is the principal factor in reducing accident liability.

When the effect of both age and experience are combined, we note that
accident liability in young and inexperienced drivers decreases by
a MASSIVE 47% over the first 2 years of qualified driving,
totally justifying the call for a compulsory probationary period during these two years.

This graph from Northern Ireland clearly shows that responsibility for crashes is highest when the driver is inexperienced and goes down year by year.

When compared with a graph going up to the age of 50+ the trend is even more obvious.

According to these young drivers - males believe that they drive less well when carrying other young passengers or when listening to radio cassettes while driving. Fewer females report such effects.

Could this mean that young male drivers are more distractible or more easily influenced by peer pressure? Could there be some other reason?

This graph would offer support for restricting the number of young passengers carried.

ESTIMATED NUMBER OF INJURY ACCIDENTS WHICH WOULD BE PREVENTED IF THE LISTED COUNTERMEASURES WERE TO BE INTRODUCED

Countermeasures	A great many	Many	A few	None at all	Would increase

Compulsory professional training for learner drivers	38%	29%	25%	7%	1%
Zero alcohol limit for inexperienced drivers	44%	21%	23%	11%	1%
* Require new drivers to display special plates to show they are inexperienced	32%	26%	30%	11%	1%
Make the driving test much harder to pass	17%	26%	35%	22%	<0.5%
Raise the legal driving age to 18	20%	18%	26%	35%	1%
Compulsory retraining if have accident or commit motoring offence in first 2 years of driving	11%	15%	35%	21%	<0.5%
Include a written section in the driving test	14%	15%	34%	37%	<0.5%
Compulsory retest if have accident or commit motoring offence in first 2 years of driving	11%	15%	35%	38%	1%
Impose a lower speed limit for new drivers	10%	15%	37%	20%	18%

Source: Cohort study of learner and novice drivers Part 2:

Attitudes, opinions and the development of driving skills in the first 2 years. TRL. Report 372