Time to raise safety standards
Driving experience providers look to new driver improvement courses
Once the realm of supercars and super speed, driving experiences are adding another wheel to their vehicles.
One of the country’s leading driving experience providers is looking to combat stalled reductions in road deaths on the UK’s roads.
Over the last decade attempts to improve road casualty statistics in the UK have plateaued.
DrivingExperience.com is looking to help change that with two new targeted packages which aim to improve drivers’ road skills.
Poor performers
The Safer Driving Course, hosted at Elvington Airfield in Yorkshire has the goal of help increasing the standard of driving and drive down deaths on the UK’s roads.
Its decision to offer more to Britain’s motorists comes amidst the release of recent data by the European Transport Safety Council. It reveals that the UK is Europe’s fifth worst-performing country in reducing deaths on the road since 2011.
This comes despite the UK generally being considered as having the safest roads in the world. Over the course of the last decade, the UK only managed to decrease its road deaths by 17.9%, with Hungary, Bulgaria, The Netherlands and Romania the only countries to perform worse.
This is in stark contrast to Europe’s top-performing country, Norway, which reduced their road-related deaths by 52.4% during the same period.
Many believe the conservative government’s scrapping of road safety targets has had a huge negative effect when it comes to road safety.
Lack of government focus
Dan Jones, Operations Manager at DrivingExperience.com, is “calling upon the UK government to keep their eye on the road”.
“It is our aim to help provide all drivers in the UK with the extra training they need to help them be better prepared for the various testing conditions they will have to face on the roads.”
This latest product is designed for drivers of all experience and age levels. It aims to raise confidence when it comes to tackling extreme road conditions such as snow and ice, as well as wet and muddy roads. This all takes place under the close supervision of experienced instructors in a controlled environment.
Learning the lessons
Jones believes we need to take lessons from more successful countries.
“If you look at Norway, they include an extreme conditions exercise as part of their compulsory driving lesson provision for all new drivers. With the increasing amount of extreme we currently battle, we could attribute initiatives like those enforced in Norway to helping drive down deaths on the roads.”
He believes the new course provides “explicit opportunities to become better drivers”.
As well as the safer driving course, they are also re-launching its Skid Control package at North Weald Airfield in Essex. It provides drivers with training to help them when they find themselves skidding out of control.
You can find out more here.