New Driver Awareness

The New Driver Awareness training has undergone extensive revision over the winter months, and the first delivery of this updated package was to the Brighton and Hove Albion Under 18s football club last month.

New drivers can be very vulnerable on the roads after passing their test – they have the knowledge, but not necessarily the experience of how to put this into practice yet. Until the age of 25, the brain isn’t fully developed, making informed decisions and perceiving risk harder to achieve. Of course, not all new drivers are always young drivers, but this can be frequently the case.

The New Driver Awareness workshops are free and cover a wide range of topics including:

• Consequences of collisions
• Making good choices when driving
• Being a responsible passenger
• Understanding how to be a safer driver

The sessions are informal and friendly, and raise the awareness of the participants, helping them to make informed choices about how they drive. There is no pass or fail: the courses are focused on providing helpful information and debate in a safe setting.

The new package includes a session with Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, where you experience a collision and the aftermath. It is intense, but it allows you to understand the consequences of a collision from the safety of a classroom environment, instead of first-hand.

Road Safety Officer Keith Baldock stated: “The Brighton and Hove Albion Under 18s trainees fully engaged with the session, and raised some good questions. The combination of the interactive session with the VR experience clearly had an effect on their perception of road risk – both as passengers and drivers.”

We will continue to rollout New Driver Awareness through the summer months – please get in touch if you would like to take part.