LARSOA calls for action to stop young driver deaths

LARSOA, the Local Authority Road Safety Officers’ Association, welcomes calls by Parliament’s Transport Select Committee to take action to prevent young driver deaths and urges the Government to put the recommendations into practice as soon as possible.

The committee wants to see the unaccompanied driving age raised 17 from 18, a ban on any alcohol when driving for the first 12 months and a further ban on carrying passengers aged 10 to 20 years between 11pm and 5am.

Simon Ettinghausen, LARSOA’s young driver adviser, says: “Safety on the roads is improving but young drivers as a group are still a problem. Government figures show that one-third of road deaths involves a car driven by a person aged between 17 and 25. Clearly we need to take robust action to prevent these needless and avoidable deaths.

“The Select Committee’s suggestions are sensible such as making the learner driver period a minimum of 12 months and better hazard perception training. LARSOA has long campaigned for this because, newly qualified young drivers have not experienced many aspects of driving, for example, driving at night, in poor weather or on motorways.”

Simon adds: “We also want road safety education to be an integral part of the National Curriculum. The ROSE 25 report by the European Commission recommends a minimum of ten hours of road safety education in school each year.*”

LARSOA also wants to see the current drink drive limit reduced for all drivers from 80mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood to 50mg which the Association believes would send out a clear message that drinking and driving is totally unacceptable.

“Road safety is a crucial issue for all of us and there is action to be taken on all aspects to make our roads safer.”

ABOUT LARSOA

LARSOA is a national road safety organisation representing road safety officers (RSOs) employed in local government across the UK.

LARSOA represents 185 of the 200 eligible local authorities across the UK, assisting RSOs to fulfil their statutory role to reduce the number and severity of road casualties through education, training and publicity programmes.

LARSOA publishes an up-to-date round-up of road safety news from across the UK on its website www.larsoa.org.uk .

LARSOA also aims to influence national debate - government policy and action together with public opinion. The association works to achieve national recognition for road safety issues, commissions research into behaviour which contributes to road collisions and develops national road safety campaigns.

The association assists in identifying achievable national targets to reduce the number of collisions on the country's roads.