This story somehow managed to spam the newsfeeds, coming in numerous times. The title of the piece laughingly trumpets that the source is an “expert 
instructor”.
To start with, there is no such thing as an “expert instructor”, and those claiming to be such are guaranteed to be much further away from the imagined finishing line than they believe they are. In this case, our erstwhile “expert” is merely the chairman of the local chapter of the Driving Instructors’ Association (DIA). But let’s take a look at what the story says – it’s from those irritating This Is… local news websites who throw stories together using a food blender.
The crux of the story is that this “expert” reckons “newly qualified drivers must be kept from fast roads until they get enough experience under their belts.”
Let’s just clarify again for our “expert” the true statistics. The vast majority of accidents involving “new” drivers tick the following boxes:
- driver aged 24 or under
- car full of mates
- at night
- on rural roads
- on a bend
- no other car involved
Reading between the lines, you have lack of experience sitting on one side of the scales, and the belief that they know it all on the other – and the scales are heavily tipped to the latter position. Reading further into it, you also have the deplorable underlying attitude of many typical sub-24-year olds.
Our “expert” appears to be campaigning for learners to be allowed on motorways. I agree with that, but for totally different reasons. How does he think this is going to be applied to all learners? A huge number live nowhere near a motorway and couldn’t possibly do lessons on one (at best, they might get on one once for a few miles). But he is quoted:
It’s not necessarily that young people are speeding, it’s that they may be going too fast for the road circumstances.
Quite. And they do that on rural or town roads – not on motorways, where bends are gentle and general visibility of the road ahead is usually good. That’s why those statistics about accidents I gave above are so significant. What’s more, the article is in This Is Gloucestershire – a county known for the number of rural roads within in – and is part of a campaign being run by that news source commemorating the number of young drivers killed on Gloucestershire’s roads.
So the unworkable solution being suggested would have to involve keeping all new drivers off all except non-NSL (National Speed Limit) A roads.
On the other hand, of course, Gloucestershire’s appalling young driver accident record could just have something more to do with the number of rural roads it has, and the attitudes of many of its drivers. And not the fact that they haven’t been taken on motorways when they’re taking driving lessons.