Bid to attract families to defensive driving

Press, 17 April 1982, Page 6

Bid to attract families to defensive driving

The New Zealand Defensive Driving Council will hold a week-long campaign to encourage families to attend defensive-driving courses.

The aim of the campaign, which will start on Monday, is to make safer driving a family responsibility. The president of the Canterbury Defensive Driving Council, Mr G. Hawkes, said. “The percentage of selftaught drivers in New Zealand is very high in comparison with other countries and, therefore, there is a vast variation in the interpretation of even common road rules.”

Defensive driving studies have found that human error apparently causes 85 per cent of road accidents. New Zealand drivers are said to be to blame for 76 per cent of all road accidents, pedestrians for 80 per cent of accidents in which they are involved, and cyclists for 49 per cent of accidents in which they are involved.

The defensive driving courses offer drivers an eight-hour programme of instruction in four-nightly twohour sessions.

During the course drivers are taught to recognise basic errors that other„road users make, to identify adverse

conditions, to anticipate the actions of other drivers, and to apply the elements of defensive driving to these situations.

So far in New Zealand, 200.000 drivers have followed the course.