Effects of Lowering the Age Limit for Driver Training

The crash risk of novice drivers decreases sharply during the first few months of autonomous driving. Providing better opportunity for more accomplished driving before getting a license to drive, the Swedish and Norwegian road authorities decided to lower the age limits for driver training. This paper compares the findings reported from the two countries regarding the changes in the amount of driver training and the post license crash risk from before and after lowering the age limit. The relationship between the amount of training and the change in crash risk will be analyzed in order to see if the change in risk is comparable with the hypothesis that added pre-license accompanied driving is equivalent to autonomous driving regarding the effect on subsequent crash risk. The results from the Swedish and Norwegian studies in combination show that lay driver training holds a high promise as an efficient measure to reduce the risk among novice drivers during the first critical period of autonomous driving.