Evaluation of a community based youth driver development program

INTRODUCTION Young drivers aged 17-25 continue to represent a major public health problem in Australia. Their fatality rate is approximately twice that of older-age drivers, a ratio that has remained relatively unchanged for over a quarter of a century. One response to this over-representation in fatal crashes has been the promotion of formal driver training and education, either in the pre-licence or post-licence period. While there is little empirical evidence to substantiate the benefit of such an approach, community-based driver training and education programs remain a popular option. One example of such a program is the Youth Driver Development Program that has been operating in the South-West of Western Australia since 1998. By December 2006, approximately 2,100 high school students had completed the pre-learner driver program. The main aim of the 20-hour, five-module on and off road program is to develop safer on-road driving behaviours through the process of attitudinal change. This presentation will discuss the methodology and findings of the matched cohort evaluation of the program. The aim of the evaluation was to investigate differences between program participants (exposed ‘cohort’) and a comparable group of non-participant drivers (non-exposed ‘controls’) across four driving outcomes within 12-months of the date of first licensing: police recorded crash involvement; Traffic Infringement Notices issued; court presented traffic convictions, and licence cancellations and suspensions.