Organisation: RAC Foundation
Date of publication: September 2025
Uploaded to Knowledge Centre: 24 September 2025
This deliberative research by Ipsos, commissioned by the RAC Foundation, explores the attitudes towards GDL of sixty-six seventeen-to-nineteen-year-olds. The interviewees comprised a mixture of learners, fully-licensed drivers and non-drivers. Their reactions, even after the risks newly-qualified young drivers face were discussed, were at best muted.
Whilst those involved in the research typically accepted that young drivers were at greater risk, they did not readily view this as a product of age and inexperience. Instead, risky or reckless driving behaviours were more often cited as the cause, making it harder for participants to support a scheme that they felt would unfairly affect themselves and their friends, who they did not consider to be “the problem.”
There was some softening in attitudes to GDL as discussions progressed, particularly when international experience was reviewed. Participants were also more open to changes in the learning-to-drive period (for example, the introduction of a minimum learning period) than to measures applied post-test, such as restrictions on carrying passengers.
Click the following link to read the full report:
https://www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Exploring-young-peoples-attitudes-to-graduated-driver-licensing-Ipsos-September-2025.pdf