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MOTORISTS need to better understand the risks involved in driving to reduce the number of deaths and injuries on the roads, a Bendigo-based driving instructor says.
Road Class Driver Training owner Andrew Scarce wants more education on road safety to be delivered to drivers, young and old.
“Because the training guys like me do is around improving behaviour, and the only way you can improve behaviour is the public or the drivers knowing the full extent of the risk,” Mr Scarce said.
“At the moment they don’t.”
Mr Scarce believes road safety messages put plenty of focus on what people should do, but not why they should do it.
Motorists know they should slow down to reduce their risk of a crash.
But what they might not realise, as Mr Scarce explained, was that increasing the speed of a vehicle from 80km/h to 105km/h, while only a 30 per cent increase in speed, resulted in a 69 per cent increase in kinetic energy.
This energy was what hurt people in a collision, he said.
Another example Mr Scarce provided was that of a child running out in front of a car, 45 metres ahead.
If the driver hit the brakes at 60km/h, he said, the car would touch the child, perhaps causing bruising.
But he said that if it was going just 5km/h faster, by the time it reached the child it would still be going 32km/h.
“People are smart, they just need the information,” Mr Scarce said.
Mr Scarce said motorists tended to drive with convenience, rather than safety in mind, which led to such risky behaviours as speeding and tailgating.
Mr Scarce is in support of the state government’s Young Driver Safety Package, which will introduce education and training initiatives for new drivers.
But he wants more education for all drivers.
In a submission to a federal senate inquiry into road safety, Mr Scarce suggested a presentation be delivered to rural drivers – a group four times as likely to be killed than their metropolitan counterparts – informing them of the full extent of the risk, along with a website.