Learners driving on motorways

[mtbc]

The UK's fastest roads are motorways. Before one passes one's driving test the provisional learner's permit allows driving everywhere but on motorways. The government is considering lifting this restriction.

This seems fine to me but Transport Minister Andrew Jones says that the current ban from motorways is often fatal which piques my curiosity: I wonder, how often? Are we talking, say, a couple of people per week being killed by learners not being allowed onto motorways?

The Scottish Government suggests lower speeds for new drivers which sounds like a bad idea to me: I suspect that the lane changes or overtaking by the traffic moving around the slower cars may cause more problems than are avoided. It was for this reason that in driving on interstates in PA and NY I would exceed 55mph speed limits when the prevailing speed of traffic seemed nearer 70mph: below 55mph I felt like a hazardous obstruction. Focusing effort instead upon strictly enforcing existing limits might be a better move. They also suggest preventing nighttime driving which also seems odd to me because at night the roads are often much quieter.

This fuss about motorways came as something as a surprise to me. It is not as if there is any shortage of divided highways, or dual carriageways, which often also have a 70mph limit for cars: the main differences from motorways that come to my mind are that motorways allow neither slow vehicles nor U-turns. Oh, and the signs are blue. They may be busier on average but that is open to enormous variation by time and place.

When I was learning to drive I would take the A30 to get to the town that had the test center; that segment was partially 70mph dual carriageway and I think is now wholly so. Here we would use a 70mph segment of the A90 to get to either of the local test centers. I am all for learners using dual carriageways and I would hope that driving tests typically include some time on a fast one. I had no idea that people would consider motorways to be an excitingly scary step up from them yet, presumably in the context of this change to learning to drive, a transportation policy guy says how many are so intimidated by the motorway environment; I wonder if those people are even comfortable on dual carriageways.

Comments

[aldabra]

Are they fatal because people pass their test and go on them and panic, or are they fatal because learners have to go the slow way round and crash into things there?

I think I had a supplementary lesson on how to do motorways after I'd passed the test.

[mtbc]

Did you find the supplementary lesson helpfully educating? I suppose I had the issue that at the time I lived well over an hour from the nearest motorway; I probably had plenty of driving time under my belt before I drove on one. The panicking theory is interesting: even if the reality is well within a driver's competence, perhaps they are addled by knowing they have never been on one before? But we kill barely a couple of people per week on motorways in total.

I suspect that the part of the journey that is the alternative to the motorway (which often is a fast A-road that can have bicyclists, pedestrians and all sorts on it) is unlikely to be so much safer as to greatly change the rate of incidents that have a learner driver involved but we do kill a few people each day on the roads so maybe there is scope for the often to be somehow true. Perhaps one safety issue with the slow way round is that drivers must significantly slow to pass through villages that busy A-roads don't yet bypass.

Regarding supplementary lessons, if we have more money someday I would quite like to do the advanced driving stuff; that kind of thing tends to be rather less available in the US.

[aldabra]

I think I found motorways easy, but terrifying in prospect, and so the supplementary lesson was useful for demystification rather than technique. (But it was a significantly long time ago now...)

[mtbc]

Ah, the demystification does sound important then. (I'm afraid I can't recall my first time on a motorway! I do remember not liking having to judge when to turn onto a 60mph single carriageway though.)

[bens_dad]

Many motorways have three lanes in each direction. Once I passed my test and drove on a such a motorway for the first time, I realized that I had to learn more about lane usage, and be prepared to (consider) pulling into the third lane if a vehicle in front of me in the first lane indicates that it is about to pull out and overtake. Not a big deal, but not nothing.

Now, within ten miles or so of me, there are both a two-lane motorway and a three-lane dual-carriageway, so this distinction is not strictly relevant ...

When I lived in a city of a quarter of a million people that was nearly a hundred miles from a motorway it was suggested that the driving test should include motorway driving. The response was "if it also requires driving on a single track road with passing-places" ...

[mtbc]

Ha, yes, I took my driving test in Bodmin so really rather far from any motorways. I am certainly glad that I learned in a hilly area with narrow country lanes, far more useful.

In my motorway driving yesterday I was struck by how few drivers change lane to give a wide berth to cars broken down on the hard shoulder. Perhaps that's not something we're encouraged to do, I should check my Highway Code I suppose.