Young drivers

Letter January 18, 2021
There are a plenty of suggestions to minimise the number of accidents which are caused by young drivers

KARACHI:

Traffic accident by young drivers is among the leading causes of death nowadays. Some people believe that the best way to reduce the number of accidents is to teach these youngsters the skills of safe driving at school. But I completely disagree to this. Also, other measures should be taken to tackle this problem.

Firstly, the main reason to be mentioned is that only teaching about the driving skills at school don’t seem to provide enough practical solutions to the learners. Although the school can teach children all of the road rules, the knowledge remains purely theoretical to those who have never driven before. For example, the give-way rules when driving to roundabout, which is among a major cause of fatal accidents can hardly be learned without practice. Although all students are taught about giving way to the oncoming cars, there are still up to 20 per cent of teenagers who disregard this basic rule and finally get involved in an accident. Thus, the school only cannot be the key to reducing the number of traffic accidents.

There are a plenty of suggestions to minimise the number of accidents which are caused by young drivers. One suggestion that could be used is to increase the legal age in driving-related legislation. According to psychologists, their knowledge-based skills like driving under the speed limit are improved with age. Another measure is to increase the number of practice sessions one has to complete if they want to acquire driving licence.

By doing so, all new drivers would be under supervision of an experienced driver during at least six months to gain enough driving experience and master the safety driving skills. As discussed above, children need to be taught road rules before they go on to practise driving at school.

M Irfan

Hub

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19th, 2021.

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