Once upon a time, young drivers were certainly frowned upon. Countless studies showed that they were more likely to encounter a crash than any other group on the road, and all of this made a lot of drivers especially wary of them.
While the above is still true to some extent, it would be fair to say that the landscape is changing. Not only have drivers themselves been made aware of their actions, but various other reasons have at least helped the situation.
Let’s now take a look at some of the ways the world is dealing with young drivers, in a bid to improve their safety.
The rise of the GPS tracker
We saw GPS explode onto the scene in the form of satellite navigation, but now it’s helping young drivers as well.
More and more parents are turning to GPS for car devices, with the aim being pretty simple – they can keep tabs on their children as they venture out in their vehicle for those dreaded initial years.
Some people might call it intrusive, but others will appreciate the reasoning completely. We’ve all been young, we’ve all made mistakes, but when something is tracking your progress it’s certainly much harder to give in to some temptations which might impact young people in their new car.
The black box
Something along similar lines to the above comes in the form of the black box. This isn’t implemented by parents, it’s actually a device that is provided by the insurance company. Once again, it’s completely related to keeping tabs on children, but again it’s for good reason.
In short, the black box can act as motivation for young drivers. It’s a device capable of tracking their style of driving. If they are the type of driver who breaks speed limits, travels at pace towards junctions and performs other classic risky manoeuvres, the black box will send a bad score to the insurer.
Suffice to say, a bad score isn’t going to reflect well on annual premiums. At the same time, if the driver receives a good score, they can usually expect a reduction in their annual cost. It’s a different way of dealing with young drivers and due to the concept still being quite new, it’s going to be interesting to see how it fares.
The rise of insurance
Unfortunately, this time we’re not referring to a rise in popularity for insurance. On the contrary, take this very literally – insurance for young people is going through the roof in terms of price.
For some, it means that driving a vehicle is just out of the question. For others, it’s all about being included on their parents insurance, which obviously brings a degree of trust into the equation. It’s these sorts of instances which can motivate young people to drive a little more carefully though – particularly if they know that their insurance can quite easily be withdrawn by parents if they are reckless on the roads.
