Graham Hurdle’s blog: 14 May 2013 – Lay the ground rules for safe driving

I’ve just read a worrying statistic that almost one in every seven young drivers thinks drink driving is becoming more socially acceptable.

The survey published by 1st Central Insurance revealed more than a third (38%) of 18-24 year olds think driving under the influence of drugs is more unacceptable than driving under the influence of alcohol, a survey suggests.

But 13% of this age group think that drink driving is more socially acceptable than it was five years ago.

Insurers 1st Central conducted a survey of 2,000 motorists’ attitudes to driving convictions to gauge social acceptability in 2013 and help inform business thinking related to risk factors.

With young drivers being also the most accident prone, as well as forming the new generation of employees joining businesses across the UK, I find these figures very perturbing.

Here are our future sales reps, field engineers, delivery drivers and so on, who will be let loose behind the wheel of a company vehicle with, if this survey is to be believed, a relatively sizeable proportion believing that drink driving is growing in acceptability rather than being completely unacceptable.

Here is a generation of drivers who, rather than state that both drug driving and drink driving are things you should never contemplate, are weighing up one against the other in terms of severity.

In my view, we have to get tough when it comes to young drivers – for their sake and for the safety of other road users.

We cannot rely on the act of them passing their test being enough to formulate the right attitude towards driving and make them safe.

The test proves they can drive but we need to make them safe – and that is mainly to do with their attitude rather than ability.

In the corporate sector, I would make safe driving a fundamental aspect of all induction programmes for any member of staff who is going to drive a vehicle – either a company provided one or their own for business use.

This would always include an assessment which, if failed, would exclude them from driving until they were deemed to have improved.

I would make sure they realised the true dangers of drink driving, drug driving, speeding, tailgating and using mobile phones and make it clear that there is a zero tolerance for this behaviour.

Without this we will continue to see young drivers killed and seriously injured on our roads, and as its clear the Government are unlikely to take any decisive action towards changing young driver attitudes I feel we, in the corporate, sector should lead the way.