I chose the topic Young Drivers and Road Safety because of its constance in society, with new drivers always reaching the roads.
According to YOURS (Youth For Road Safety), there are five key risk factors that influence young drivers, which are; speeding, drink driving, seatbelts, helmets (cyclers) and distracted driving.
I’m going to focus on three of those key factors; speeding, drink driving and distracted driving. I am also going to talk about how most young people killed by road traffic injuries live in low and middle income countries.
Speeding
It is a simple fact that speeding can cause great injury in crashes, science tells us the higher the speed, the more kinetic energy the vehicle and the driver are carrying. This means that more energy is released when colliding with another vehicle or object, such as a tree or wall. Part of the energy released will be contained by the objects involved in the crash and part will be held by the human body, causing injuries. The human body is fragile and can only handle so much energy without being damaged. The more energy, the greater the damage.
Pedestrians, cyclists, and people in lightweight vehicles will have more severe injuries if hit by a speeding vehicle. Adult pedestrians have less than a 20% chance of dying if struck by a car at less than 50 km/h but almost a 60% risk of dying if hit at 80 km/h.
Drink Driving
When it comes to drink driving there are many risks, even a small amount of alcohol can cause the following:
Poor coordination: trouble doing more than one thing at a time, difficulty steering the car.
Longer reaction time: reacting more slowly when something unexpected happens.
Poor judgment: trouble judging your own and your peers behaviour.
Loss of concentration, memory, vision and hearing: focusing only on the road ahead, losing track of what is taking place in your peripheral vision, missing out on things you see and hear.
False sense of confidence and overestimation of abilities.
Distracted Driving
People simply cannot multi-task, It’s proven that your brain cannot do two mentally demanding tasks at the same time, especially while driving, which is considered a ‘cognitively demanding’ task.
Doing something else while driving puts more demand on the driver, which can reduce their driving capabilities. For example, it may cause the driver to become less observant or to make worse decisions about how to control the vehicle safely. This lower standard of driving means that a driver is likely to fail to anticipate hazards, and means accidents can happen due to the distraction.
The result is that drivers using a phone to talk, text, or browse the internet are less able to stay in the appropriate lane, detect any changes around them and have a low response rate. Drivers talking on the phone are also more likely to exceed the speed limit and not keep a steady speed. When texting, people often drive at lower speeds, but their delayed reaction time, inability to maintain appropriate lane positions and assess traffic conditions still make texting while driving extremely dangerous.
Low and Middle Income Countries
Many young people killed by driving accidents live in LMICs and are vulnerable road users. The socio-economic condition of a family affects the likelihood of a child or young adult being killed or injured in a road traffic crash. Those from economically poor backgrounds, in both richer and poorer countries, are at a greater risk. More than half of all road traffic deaths happen among individuals between the ages of 15 and 55 and 73% of those who lose their lives are males. This means that victims are in the prime of life and often the provider for their families. This loss can push their families further into poverty.
Three factors combine to put young people at more risk of road traffic crashes worldwide: age, inexperience and gender (boys under the age of 25 years are nearly three times as likely to be killed as girls of this age, in driving accidents). This is added to the factors that put all age groups at greater risk, including lack of laws for road safety, insufficient law enforcement and worn out roads and vehicles.
‘Environmental context’ must also be looked at, for example, roads that don’t cater to the needs of all road users like pedestrians and children, pedestrians and cyclists sharing the road with motorized traffic and insufficient enforcement of safety laws.