This new test is set to become a vocational test and is being closely watched by Whitehall.

The voluntary 90-minute test provides a Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC).   Drivers will pass if they demonstrate a high level of safe, defensive and environmentally friendly driving.  The Eco-Advanced Driving Test costs £160 and will test drivers on most types of road situation.

Drivers who are successful could benefit from:

• fuel consumption savings up to 15% below the vehicle’s official average

• reduced risk of incidents and reduced vehicle wear and tear by up to 60%

• maximum vehicle insurance discounts

The test is targeting over 20 million UK business and vocational car and van drivers.  Eco-qualified drivers will be attractive to employers who wish to reduce their business vehicle running costs. A major supermarket chain is already “keenly interested” and many more employers are expected to demand that their work drivers be Eco Certified. It’s highly likely that vehicle insurers will encourage companies, or at least ‘risk sensitive’ businesses, to employ Ecoqualified drivers.

The £160 test cost “will be amortised in weeks to then be permanently profitable for all successful candidates”, say test creators the Approved Driving Instructors National Joint Council (ADINJC) and Driver Education Research Foundation (DERF).  DERF Director Peter Russell adds: “Successful candidates will be the top 10% of Britain’s business drivers. The test could spread abroad.”

They found that more than 20% of 17 to 20 year olds are not covered by a valid car insurance policy, which amounts to a staggering 243,000 illegal young drivers on our roads.

Many illegal drivers cite the huge cost of an insurance policy as being the reason for not having cover.  Yet the risks of not having a policy are huge, not just for themselves, but also for anybody they may be unfortunate enough to crash into.

The BBC reports the story of 21 year old Gary Street, who was hit by an uninsured driver at 30mph in Manchester two years ago.

“I was travelling through Manchester City Centre on my way to work when a car hit me from behind as I was stationary,” he said.

“I was sent off into the other side of the road, the airbags went off, the seat belts imploded. The car was in quite a state to be honest.”

Gary was left with neck and back injuries, and was in quite a lot of pain and out of action for over a month as a result of the crash.

But as the other driver had no insurance, Gary was left to foot the bill.  He said: “I had no other option but to claim on my own insurance which came to a cost of £900 excess.

“I lost my no claims bonus and obviously it’s costing me more now to insure my car.”

Whilst out on patrol, Police use ANPR technology (automatic number plate recognition) to scan hundreds of car registrations every few minutes.  The system is able to instantly check if a vehicle has a current valid MoT certificate, tax disc and whether the driver has insurance.

The BBC interviewed Chief Inspector Richard Joyce from Surrey Police, who recently carried out a joint operation with police officers from Kent and Sussex on the M25.

He said: “We have the power to stop, question, and in some cases, arrest drivers without insurance.  The consequences for them can be anything from a fine, to points on their licence to having their car scrapped.”

New drivers should be aware that, for the first two years of passing their driving test they are subject to a probationary period, during which they will automatically lose their full driving licence if they accumulate 6 points or more.  Their licence is revoked and they must apply for a provisional licence and pass both the theory and practical tests again before obtaining another full driving licence.  And the number of penalty points given for driving without insurance?  6 points – therefore instant disqualification.

22 year old Sam, from Kent, was caught driving without insurance when he was 18.  He said, “I was driving without insurance because basically I couldn’t afford it, the cost was too high.

“I knew I should have had it but I also knew I was a good driver and I was safe.”

Sadly, this is the view of many young drivers – they suffer from the “it’ll never happen to me” syndrome.  The Chief Executive of the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB), Ashton West says that the high cost of covering young drivers is not just about what car they drive.  In fact, it is usually down to the risk the driver poses on the roads.

“Young drivers statistically are a bad risk. They are many times more likely to have an accident.”

With so many young drivers on the roads illegally without cover, insurance companies, the police and motorists all say something needs to be done to tackle the problem.

Gary thinks he has the answer: “If insurance wasn’t so expensive for young drivers, it would encourage people to actually have the insurance.

“Then if you didn’t have the insurance I think the consequences of the law should be a lot tougher.”

Source:  BBC Newsbeat

More than half of all new drivers banned in the first two years of passing their test don’t bother retaking it.  The law says after a ban you must re-sit a test before driving again, but many people don’t realise.

Road safety groups reckon many young people are getting behind the wheel illegally.

They’re asking courts not to send driving licenses back to banned drivers before they’ve passed a re-test.

Ollie from Essex was aged 17 and had only been driving a few weeks when he got pulled over.

“I got caught speeding,” he says, “doing a hundred miles an hour, so it was an instant ban.”

He’s one of thousands of young drivers who get disqualified every month for picking up six points or more in their first two years after passing their test.

“After the month ban, through the post came my driving license so I thought, ‘Well, that’s my license to drive back’, so I carried on driving.”

He’d been told he’d have to take a re-test, but because his license was returned after a month he began driving again.

‘More likely risk’

The DVLA has told Newsbeat 17,814 people have been banned from driving since October 2008 but, like Ollie, almost half – 8,196 people – haven’t retaken their test.

The Young Drivers Act, which came into force in 1998, was supposed to deter dangerous driving, but road safety campaigners say this shows it’s not working.

“It’s naive to think that all these drivers just disappear and jump on the bus, they don’t, many of them are still driving,” says Edmund King from the AA.

“I think this is a major problem, but perhaps it’s a problem that the authorities aren’t really aware about.”

“When I was 9 years old I was run over by an illegal driver,” says 25-year-old Leigh-Ann Johns from Redcar.

She had to have both her legs amputated after an uninsured, unlicensed driver mounted the kerb and hit her.

“I just don’t see the harm in putting back in for your test,” she said.

Back in April the government announced changes to the driving test and introduced the pre-driver qualification.

From October 2010 learners will have to choose their own route to a certain place during their test to prove they can drive independently.

There will also be a 3-month course rolled out across schools and colleges which will count towards learners’ theory tests.

Message not clear?

But these figures show thousands of new drivers are still getting disqualified and then breaking the law by not bothering to retake their test.

“We clearly need to make sure that we look at this problem,” says Transport Minister Jim Fitzpatrick, “look at these numbers and come up with solutions to solve this problem and we’re very happy to do it.”

The AA reckons one reason that the situation is happening is because the message that you need to retake your test if you’re banned in the first two years of driving isn’t getting through.

They also think people having their license returned by the courts before they’ve taken another test needs to be looked into.

The Department of Transport says there is absolutely no excuse for anyone to be driving without a valid license.

They say anyone who does so is knowingly breaking the law and faces tough penalties.

The survey found that 25.4% of black-vehicle owners have speeding convictions, and they are also 9% more likely than the average driver to have speeding endorsements on their driving licences.

The next “speediest” colour was grey, with 25.1% of grey car owners having speeding convictions, followed by silver, blue and brown.

Owners of purple-coloured cars were least likely to have been caught exceeding speed limit, while owners of white, yellow and red cars have comparatively few convictions as well.

Brian Martin, Managing Director of Elephant.co.uk’ said, “We wanted to know why it is that drivers of black and grey cars appear to have more of a propensity to speed so we looked into more detail at the cars on our books.

“We found it didn’t necessarily correlate that black and grey cars would have bigger engines, so evidently for drivers of these coloured cars, the temptation to break the speed limit is simply too great whatever their engine size.”

Interesting!

A survey of 1,000 new drivers found that the average number of lessons per driver has fallen from 43 in 2008 to 32 in 2009 (compiled from data taken during the first 3 months of each year).

On average, those who passed in March this year received 63 hours of tuition from friends or family, compared to just 41 hours in the first three months of 2008.

Steve Chelton, Insurer Development Manager from Swinton, said: “Approved Driving Instructors go through rigorous testing to ensure that they have the skills and knowledge to teach learners to drive safely.  We recommend that all learners take professional lessons and only practice with friends or family when the instructor says they are ready.

“Following the Driving Standards Agency’s recent reform of learner driver training and testing, it is now more important than ever to take lessons from a fully qualified instructor.”

In an attempt to assist learner drivers through the recession, many firms have held their prices or dropped them slightly.  But it also paves the way for the poorer, less popular instructors to undercut the more skilled and professional ones by offering ridiculously low lesson prices.  More often than not, cheap driving lessons means cheap service.  At Latics Driver Training, we are finding increasingly more students coming to us from other companies who have paid for cheap driving lessons (or been duped by many of the ridiculously cheap introductory special deals), but have ended up taking many more lessons than they would otherwise have needed.  It’s only when they’ve spent a fortune on many cheap lessons that they realise what a mistake they made.

So, when shopping around for driving lessons, ask yourself why some instructors and driving schools are advertising such cheap prices.  If they were busy instructors with a good reputation and high pass rates, they wouldn’t need to offer special deals!

Remember – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

“Seven out of ten drivers have driven dangerously because they were making phone calls, sending texts or fiddling with the radio – with some admitting to having actually caused an accident as a result, research by car insurance compant, Swiftcover reveals. Although mobile phones and in-car entertainment systems are big causes of dangerous driving, smoking, personal grooming and using a sat-nav system have all been cited as distractions – while 4 per cent of motorists admit they have driven while watching a movie!”

The following link just demonstrates the dangers of driving dangerously: Victim’s road safety warning

Swiftcover’s online research of more than 1,000 drivers revealed:

• 84 per cent of drivers have made or answered a call without a hands-free kit
• 69 per cent say they have actually caused, or come close to causing an accident while fiddling with the radio
• 63 per cent of drivers have typed and sent a text while driving
• 26 per cent have taken their hands off the wheel while driving to eat
• 16 per cent of drivers have been distracted by using a sat-nav system
• 15 per cent have been distracted whilst personal grooming at the wheel
• 15 per cent of drivers say lighting up and smoking a cigarette has distracted them while driving
• 13 per cent admit they have sent an e-mail while driving
• 11 per cent of drivers have been distracted by looking out for speed cameras
• 4 per cent of motorists say they have watched a film whilst driving

In addition 30 per cent of motorists say they have driven whilst using an MP3 player”.

Madness…  Click here to read the rest of the article.

Research by esure car insurance released last week finds that some motorists are putting themselves and others at risk by Tweeting behind the wheel. The insurers say nearly one in ten of motorists questioned are using mobile internet services and social networks whilst driving.

To prove the point, esure released the following list of driving Tweets:

“Driving with my knees and peeling an orange…Probably not the safest thing to be doing.”

“Driving school bus”

“Irresponsible twitter driving woo!”

“Driving up to Newcastle while we Tweet!”

“Driving home in the rain…almost crashed!”

“Trying my best to stay awake while driving”

“Awake, hungover, and driving”

“Is it wise to use Twitter while driving? Probably not”

“Intoxicated driving. Let’s hope this works out”

“Twittering and driving…”

Mike Pickard, Head of Risk & Underwriting at esure car insurance, said: “There is a time and a place for social networking and it certainly isn’t when driving a car. Messages being posted on Twitter from behind the wheel are a real cause for concern for the safety of other motorists and pedestrians.”

But the Association of British Drivers (ABD) have hit back at the recent claims, saying it isn’t British drivers putting road users at risk with the social networking site, saying the research by esure’s “Twittering PR is ‘Only a Commercial’!”

In its own research, the ABD found many of the Tweets quoted by esure were not UK based:

“Driving with my knees and peeling an orange…Probably not the safest thing to be doing.”- USA

“Driving school bus”- USA

“Irresponsible twitter driving woo!”- USA

“Driving up to Newcastle while we Tweet!”- Australia

“Driving home in the rain…almost crashed!”- Australia

“Trying my best to stay awake while driving”- USA

“Awake, hungover, and driving”- USA

“Is it wise to use Twitter while driving? Probably not”- USA

“Intoxicated driving. Let’s hope this works out”- USA

“Twittering and driving…”- USA

ABD spokesman Nigel Humphries said: “Whilst everyone should rightly be concerned about any unnecessary distractions to driving, using evidence from other countries in an attempt to generate a bit of publicity and incite more hysteria about British drivers is not remotely helpful.

“All drivers should make every effort to avoid all unnecessary distractions whilst driving.”

ABD chairman Brian Gregory added: “If this is typical of the analytical skills of insurance companies, no wonder premiums are so high.”

Collingwood Insurance now offer Flexible Short Term Insurance For Learner Drivers, enabling you to insure any car, Group 15 or less and under £20,000 in value, from as short a period as a week.  Why not get a bit more practice in at home to give you an even better chance of passing your driving test first time?

Drive your parents, grandparents, friends or relatives car without any risk to their insurance.  Just take out a policy for each vehicle when you need it. After an inital 28 day policy, cover can be renewed for a period of 7, 28 or 84 days.

Click the banner above for a quick and easy quotation, and let us know how you get on!