EARLY LEARNING CENTRE
The Under 17 Car Club is transforming the lives of young drivers. Tim Oldham reports on how this is being achieved y the time Megan Pickstock celebrated her 17th birthday in June 2013, she’d racked up more than 400 hours’ driving experience. In that time, Megan had driven at night, at motorway speeds, taken part in several skid-pan sessions, reversed an articulated lorry into its parking space and completed various other skills tests in cars that she was unfamiliar with. I’m not sure how many of these activities the average driver would achieve in their driving lifetime, never mind prior to taking their driving test. Oh, and with no specific advanced driver preparation, she got a F1RST in April 2014, a drive that IAM examiner Andy Poulton described as “an excellent test overall, with far superior skills than I have ever had from a young person”. Although Megan is clearly a very good driver for her age, she’s far from being the only one. Megan’s exceptional level of driving experience is all down to The Under 17 Car Club, a volunteer-run charitable organisation that develops young drivers to become safer and more effective on the road.
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So, when can you start? The club welcomes anyone who is tall enough to drive and aged between 12 and 15 during the year of joining. Members then take part in around 35 full-day, club-organised events throughout the year, completing a varied and challenging curriculum with the view to preparing them for a life of safe driving, as U17CC President, Paul Silverwood, explains. “The young people who join us are interested in cars, but are more focused on being better drivers,”
Top: six of the club’s students who are learning to drive. Above: on the course with instructors
he says. “Ultimately, we’re about keeping them safe. Our training methods, rooted in Roadcraft, are not designed to teach our members to pass their driving test, but to teach them to become more effective when they are driving on the road.” And the club’s methods deliver results that go a long way to achieving what all parents want: a reduction in the risk that their children will become a victim of a road incident.
Paul Underhill Photography
AS EASY AS ABC
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28/07/2014 18:02