Organisation: RAC Foundation
Date of publication: September 2025
Uploaded to Knowledge Centre: 23 September 2025
Supporting young drivers to stay safe in the critical early months after they pass their test, whilst they are at disproportionate risk, is a huge challenge, but one which is under-addressed.
In recent years, decades even, there has been much debate about protecting new young drivers and other road users through a system of progressive or graduated driver licensing which is relatively common abroad though no government has committed to implementing this type of the scheme in Great Britain.
But this rapid evidence review shows that there is a resource that can make a contribution to improving safety if only it was better utilised: parents and guardians.
The evidence base demonstrates that:
- Parents’ influence extends deep into the first years of independent driving, a period consistently linked to the highest crash risk.
- Parental supervision, rule setting, modelling, and vehicle access decisions all shape exposure to risk and the consolidation of safe driving behaviours.
- Structured, well-designed interventions, from parent coaching to feedback-based telematics, have been effective in broadening the range of driving situations young drivers experience during practice, enhancing hazard perception and promoting safer independent driving.
- Crucially, these interventions work most effectively alongside, not instead of, licensing frameworks such as GDL, enabling parents to reinforce licensing conditions in everyday decision making at home.
Click the link below to access the full report:
https://www.racfoundation.org/research/safety/more-than-a-passenger-how-parents-shape-young-driver-outcomes