Project protecting Gloucestershire's young drivers gets funding boost (From Gazette Series)

Gloucestershire Pathfinder Project first to receive funding from Police and Crime Commissioner Martin Surl

11:00am Friday 1st March 2013 in News By Daniel Chipperfield

A PROJECT to protect young drivers is the first to benefit from money set aside by Gloucestershire’s Police and Crime Commissioner.

The Gloucestershire Pathfinder Project aims to reduce the number of casualties on roads amongst new drivers and is getting a £30,000 grant from the newly created commissioner’s fund which aims to make the county safer.

The money will go towards teaching up to 100 students from the district the principles of safe driving.

Commissioner Martin Surl said that statistics showed more than a quarter of 17 to 19-year-olds, most of them young men, crashed within a year of passing their driving test.

He added that one in three of those seriously injured or killed in a car crash were under the age of 25.

"That would suggest that the way most young people learn to drive fails to provide them with the skills they need to survive the most dangerous year of their lives," he said.

Paul Silverwood, chairman of The Under 17 Car Club trust, which will deliver the programme, said: "Around 25 per cent of collisions and 54 per cent of road deaths occur on rural roads, of which Gloucestershire has many.

"This represents a particular hazard to novice drivers and the Pathfinder programme is designed to help them cope with this and the other driving challenges they must address to be safe at 17."