The folk behind the driving test are looking for learners to tell them about their driver training experiences to help young people in the future become safer, better drivers.

Created by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) and the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), the Driver2020 project aims to make young drivers more confident and skilful by shaping how they learn to drive and, once they have passed their test, how they drive for 12 months afterwards.

And research shows that help is needed. Despite the outstanding service offered by Britain’s driving instructors, teenage drivers are still involved in 9% of all fatal and serious accidents according to the charity Brake – even though they only make up 1.5% of licence holders in the UK. Also, a quarter of young drivers crash within two years of getting their driving licence.

Learner Opinions Needed

To address this very real problem, the Driver2020 project will run for three years – up until 2021 – and needs you and your opinions to make it work. It wants to use the feedback from you and over 14,000 young people to shape the future of the driving test, so if you are aged between 17-24 and are currently learning to drive, get in touch and register for the project.

Once you’ve signed up, you may either get free training, e-learning or be asked to download an app to help with your driver education. Once you’ve passed your test, you will then be paid to complete four surveys – one just after passing your test, then the others at three, six and 12 months after passing. Each completed survey will see a £5 shopping voucher delivered to your inbox.

Best of all, as well as that warm glowy feeling of knowing you have helped make our roads safer, you’ll also be entered into a prize draw that could see you win a year’s fully comp car insurance (up to £1,500) or other prizes including shopping vouchers and iPads.

ADI Support Needed Too

To help get the feedback from the 14,000 learners required for the project, the TRL is also asking instructors to promote the project to their pupils and encourage them to sign up. Driver2020’s project director Shaun Helman explains: “Without the help of Approved Driving Instructors… research projects like Driver2020 simply cannot succeed.”

For more details on the Driver2020 project or to register, head to the official site here.

“[I look] forward to being able to come back to the [ADI] profession at the end of the project to see what role they can play in implementing whatever we find, so that we can all work together to improve the safety of the people we all serve – those new drivers who are hungry to learn, to improve, and to make the roads safer.” – Shaun Helman, Project Director of Driver2020