Accompanied driving put into practice; Survey among 2toDrivers and their coaches.

On 1 November 2011, 2toDrive, a six-year pilot with accompanied driving was started in the Netherlands. During the pilot youths can take their driving test from the age of 17 and gain experience while driving accompanied by a coach until they can drive independently when they are 18 years old. SWOV is evaluating the effect on crashes and offences in a number of steps. This report presents the second step: “How is the accompanied driving phase put into practice?” The data has been gathered with an online questionnaire among 2,001 youths who were participating in the accompanied driving phase, the 2toDrivers, and 1,635 coaches. The results indicate that the vast majority of 2toDrivers are coached by their parents. Most of them practice regularly; once or several times a week. In general the youths themselves take the initiative to practice. It is estimated that the average 2toDrive participant drives a total of 1,700 km during the accompanied driving phase. Accompanied driving takes place in a wide variety of situations: in urban as well as rural environments, during as well as outside rush hour, during daylight as well as in the dark, and when it rains. By far the majority of trips are trips that would have been made anyway: family visit, dropping off or picking up someone, getting in the groceries, etc.