Ah, the October long weekend! Looked forward by everyone, just not while battling the chaos of extra traffic.

While there was an overall decrease in road fatalities in NSW in 2021, the Orana and Central West regions alarmingly bucked the trend.

Fatalities in the Orana region sky rocketed by 36 per cent while the Central West saw a 20 per cent increase in fatalities.

This long weekend, Transport for NSW are anticipating large traffic volumes and delays. Lachlan Shire Council is among others urging motorists to take regular breaks, drive safely and allow for increased travel times.

Young people are traditionally over represented in road accident statistics and a long weekend is a good time to take a look at new research to help with the road toll.

In 2021, young drivers under 26 made up just 14 per cent of total drivers on NSW roads, but sadly represented almost a quarter of the state’s road fatalities. This is partly due to inexperience, but differences in brain development and psychological profiles also play a role according to new research.

Professor Brett Molesworth, an academic at University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney wants to change the way young people learn to drive.

It's common knowledge that young brains are still developing right up until the age of 25, and that young people are more likely to take risks when making decisions and tend to have a sense of invincibility. And we also know that speeding is the biggest contributing factor in accidents among young drivers.

So how do you work with all that if you’re trying to prevent young drivers being over-represented in road fatalities and accidents?

According to Professor Molesworth, it turns out that one of the most effective ways to make young people reduce speed and improve their overall driver safety is not through technology, but through good old-fashioned, verbal feedback.

“There's adaptive technology in motor vehicles that provides you with an auditory alert when you exceed the speed limit,” Prof. Molesworth says. “But when we tested its effectiveness with young drivers, we were amazed to see it had the opposite effect with young drivers – ironically, they exceeded the speed limit even more.

"And when we asked them, ‘why didn’t you adhere to the speed limit when you heard that auditory warning?’ they basically told us they didn't like ‘Big Brother’ observing them and telling them how to drive and what to do.”

Prof. Molesworth said his research has shown that young drivers respond best to verbal feedback from a real person after completing a stint of driving, either in a simulator, or in the real world.

To be effective, the feedback involves three components.

1. How much they exceeded the speed limit.
2. The safety implications associated with exceeding the speed limit, and 
3. The financial implications associated with being booked for speeding, as well as explaining how many demerit points they would lose.

“For example we might say, ‘do you realise during this drive, the maximum speed that you travelled was 75 kilometres per hour in a 70 zone, and you've exceeded the speed limit by five kilometres an hour? Doing so will increase your distance required to stop, and it increases the likelihood of being involved in an accident. For that breach, you will be penalised $300 and lose two demerit points from your license."

Prof. Molesworth intends to test this in future research, as well as using eye-tracking technology to observe where young drivers are looking while they’re driving. He observed in one of his studies that young drivers infrequently looked at the speedometer while driving.

“What we are trying to do is test the effectiveness of various eye-scanning patterns with young drivers to see if we can educate them about where to look, and importantly, the duration of what they need to look at," he said.

While any research that reduces the road toll is welcome, in the mean time, observing simple safe driving rules can also make a huge difference.

Enjoy your long weekend!