Geoff Upson: Road safety campaigner discusses young driver education

Rodney local board member and road safety campaigner Geoff Upson join Ryan Bridge to talk about the safety of young people on the road.

Upson says that although road fatality rates are declining, there is more work to do when it comes to educating first-time drivers.

He said that professional driver training alongside more time in the car with Mum and Dad could make all the difference tomake sure teenagers know how to conduct themselves on the road.

Upson also said that education about the car itself is also lacking, with misunderstandings in tire grip capacity leading to more accidents in the rain.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
New research from the AA Research Foundation this morning. They
reckon young drivers are committing around forty percent fewer traffic
offenses than are a decade ago. Offending rates for fifteen
to nineteen year olds have fallen by forty one percent,
drunk and drugged driving by fifty eight percent, and seat
belt offenses by fifty two percent. Young driver fatalities are
also down, but still above the OBBOCD average and above

(00:23):
the older age groups here as well. Jeff Upson is
a Rodney local board member and road safety campaigner with
me this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Jeff, good, he he done?

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah good, thank you. First of all, these numbers are good.
I mean, we see the headlines about the boy racers,
but actually on the whole they're behaving better than they
were than I was ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, I mean, I think, you know, we can't lump
in the boy racers and all young drivers. But yeah, no,
you're right in this statistic of fifty eight percent reduction
and drink driving and young people. I mean, that's an
amazing statistic. But we do need to be careful how
we review statistics because that could just be drink driver testing.
So so it's really important how we interpret the data,

(01:05):
But if the statistics also show less crashes, then maybe
that is a factual thing.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Well, I mean the deaths, the fatalities are coming down, right,
fatalities are down from twenty two point five per one
hundred thousand to sixteen point six over that ten year period.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, I wonder what else we're looking at, you know,
some of the other things that have created that data.
I mean, is it the tires are getting better on cars?
I mean, have we got better driver education now? I
think driver education for young people is probably the most
important thing, and it's important that we learn how to
drive when we were younger. You know, it's a lot

(01:46):
more difficult to learn things, you know, for you and
I now than when we were at school an old.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Dog new tricks. So one of the things that they've
identified is they want this is AA. They want driver
training to be well, the learner license period to go
from six months to a year. And they reckon that,
you know, the parents perhaps aren't spending enough time in
the car with the kids. Something like seventeen percent of
them are getting less than fifteen hours over that six

(02:16):
month period of actual driving time.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, that's not a lot of time at all. And
The other thing is that if you're learning from your parents,
I mean, that's that's great, but it's sometimes you pick
up the bad habits and sometimes it's really important to
have a professional driver trainer, at least for a small
portion of your education process. And there's a lot of
professional driver training courses, you know, Greek Murphy sponsors one

(02:42):
that it's on the racetrack and you learn some particular
special skills. Some of the most basic things are not
being taught. You know, for example, what a tire footprint is.
We are't going to it today, but maybe the listeners
will google that later on and find out what that means.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
What can you just tell me because I actually don't know.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Okay, Yeah, so you look at the tire and you
think it's a massive, big tire, but the tire footprint
is the teeny tiny little part of that tire that's
actually touching the road, and quite often that's about the
size of your hand. So you know, you think you're
driving one hundred or one hundred and ten kilometers along
a wet road, but you've only got such a teeny
tiny little bit of rubber actually keeping you going in

(03:23):
a straight line.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, right, okay, but like Fred Finstone putting his foot down,
it's not much. It's not much tread. Okay. So so
you kind of agree with AA. You think there should
be a more focus on training. Who taught you how
to drive?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Jeff? It was a mix I learned from watching watching
Dad drive. I also had a lot of experience off road,
you know, on farms, driving on gravel roads and driving
der bikes. So I think I was quite lucky in
that respect. But I did have some professional driver training
and I did a team some driver training courses. There

(03:57):
was a the company's gone bus now but it was
called drive and that was like a full day event.
Some in the classroom, some some behind the wheel and
some of the some of the things that I learned
doing that was invaluable. You know, you just can't learn
it without actually doing something like that.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, I did the same thing, Jeff. Thank you very
much for that. Jeff Upson, a Rodney Local board member,
road safety campaigner.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
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