Education and Training program for young drivers

Initiative details

Young drivers are among the most dangerous group of road users. On Czech roads, drivers under the age of 24 cause every 10th accident and are responsible for every 6th dead or seriously injured. The most common reason is fast driving. Alcohol and drugs also have a great influence on their accidents. Young motorists often take unnecessary risks, look for adrenaline situations, overestimate their abilities, but they cannot react to danger.

Initiative date

Who was/is your target audience?

Policy makers
Public authorities
Young adults 17-25
Parents
Educational staff

Topic

Capacity building and training
Education in school or in community organizations

Project activities

If you work together with external partners, list the most important partners and briefly describe their role.

Czech Insurers' Bureau - cofinances the projects. A partner member of the VISION 0 platform.
Czech Association of Driving Schools - manages and implements the Start Driving courses and participates in the Hazard Perception project. A partner member of the VISION 0 platform.
Association Center for Improvement Driving - provides provides technical background for courses. A partner member of the VISION 0 platform.
Autoklub of the Czech Republic - participates in both projects and is the the Hazard Perception project owner. A member of the VISION 0 platform.
Ministry of Transport - implements the interactive animations and questions in the final tests and in the eduaction platform for the applicants for the driving licence. A partner member of the VISION 0 platform.
Police of the Czech Republic - participates in both projects. A partner member of the VISION 0 platform.

Please describe the project activities you carried/are carrying out and the time period over which these were implemented.

As the VISION 0 platform of 22 partners (www.platformavize0.cz), we are entering this competition with a program for young and beginning drivers consisting of two projects this year. They focus on education, training and hazard perception of young drivers.
Our main project focused on young drivers under 24 years of age, their parents and driving school instructors - a 3 years project START DRIVING - is an educational program, which offers self-improving driving courses on 8 polygons (safe driving centres) throughout the Czech Republic.
The courses are financed by the Czech Insurers' Bureau and therefore they are free for young drivers (as well for their parents and driving school instructors).
The objectives of the project are: supplementing and deepening knowledge and responsibility with the help of traffic psychological seminars and workshops with the Traffic Police of the Czech Republic and increasing driving skills in driving in the form of teaching in safe driving centers and evaluation rides in road traffic.
Orientation program of the Start Driving course:
1) Morning block
- lecture and introduction by the Police of the Czech Republic
- traffic psychological workshop of an accredited traffic psychologist
- road safety team workshop
- presentation of assistance systems
- practical evaluation drives in road traffic
2) Afternoon block
- safe driving theory and crisis management
- practical crisis management such as: - emergency braking at different speeds until complete stop, - cornering / understeer / overrun, - braking on different surfaces (wet, slippery, dry), - safe evasive maneuver.
As already mentioned, the project also targets parents of young drivers secondarily, as they are most often the ones who have a decisive role in the training of young drivers. Therefore, parents have the opportunity to complete the course with their child free of charge. This will help parents to be good mentors to their children.

The second no less important project that complements our program focused on young drivers is the Hazard Perception project (see the link "noveotazky"). As part of this project, we are developing interactive videos and questions that are implemented or planned to be implemented by the Ministry of Transport in the final test tests for applicants for a driving license (ie mostly young drivers). The aim of these questions and videos, which are also part of the Ministry of Transport's education portal, is to teach young drivers to better perceive and identify risks in traffic. As part of the project, we have also developed an interactive game that helps novice motorcyclists identify risks in traffic (see the links above "etesty").

The VISION 0 platform was established in 2018 by the Foundation of Kooperativa pojišťovna, a.s., Vienna Insurance Group and today it consists of 22 partners: https://platformavize0.cz/en/about-us/.

Evaluation

What has been the effect of the activities?

Approximately 100,000 young drivers are affected each year preparing to obtain a driving license.

We realized an questionnaire survey of the Start Driving 2021 project, which was reached by a team of experts from the Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Pardubice: From the point of view of the benefit of the course itself, the change in behavior in road traffic was examined, which was reflected in a reduction in the frequency of fines and traffic accidents of accident participants. From the point of view of the evaluation of respondents who passed the course (Start Driving), in most items characterizing the behavior of drivers, aggressiveness and attitudes towards driving the vehicle showed better indicators compared to respondents who did not complete the course.

Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE): 68, 21 mil. CZE (2,8 mil EUR) by the Start Driving (SD) project 2021, 34 mil. CZE (1,4 mil. EUR) by the Hazard Perception (HP) project.
Media impact (Gross Rating Point GRP): 208,46 GRP by the SD project and 389 GRP by the HP project.

Please briefly explain why your initiative is a good example of improving road safety.

The Start Driving project is inspired by the Austrian model of two-phase training for beginning drivers, which in the period under review until 2013 led to a 30% reduction in the accident rate of young drivers.
For the first time in the Czech Republic, the so-called second phase of driver education demonstrates the possibility of subsequent education after obtaining a driver's license. We are negotiating with the Ministry of Transport on a so-called "driving license on try", a concept that includes a two-stage training for young drivers.
The concept of interactivity animations in test questions for driving license applicants helps to increase the perception and awareness of the risks that novice drivers face in traffic. As a result, applicants for a driving license are forced to think about the questions in the education portal and in the final tests. Simply put, they not only mechanically memorize them.

How have you shared information about your project and its results?

Both the Start Driving project and the Hazard Perception projects is relatively well known in the media (HP project as the "New Questions" project) both regionally and nationwide - see the above-mentioned GRP and AVE.
We use the press, television, radio and social networks for the promotion of projects.
Of course, the sharing of information and outputs from both projects and the interconnection of activities across the platform of vision 0, ie between the partners (b2b) - especially with the Ministry of Transport, the Police of the Czech Republic, associations, etc.