TRANSCRIPT

LAW REFORM, ROAD AND COMMUNITY SAFETY

COMMITTEE
Inquiry into lowering the probationary driving age in Victoria to 17

Melbourne — 15 June 2016

Members

Mr Geoff Howard — Chair Ms Fiona Patten

Mr Bill Tilley — Deputy Chair Ms Natalie Suleyman
Mr Martin Dixon Mr Murray Thompson
Mr Khalil Eideh

Staff

Acting executive officer: Mr Andrew Homer

Research officer: Mr John Aliferis

Witnesses

Mr John Merritt, chief executive, and

Ms Robyn Seymour, director, vehicle and road use policy, VicRoads.

Necessary corrections to be notified to

executive officer of committee

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 1

 The CHAIR — We are ready to commence our first public hearing of the Law Reform, Road and
Community Safety Committee’s inquiry into lowering the probationary driving age to 17. I welcome those
members in the public gallery as well as those officially here representing VicRoads who are going to speak to
us today. Speaking to us today are Robyn Seymour and John Merritt? Is that correct?

Ms SEYMOUR — Yes.

Mr MERRITT — That is right.

The CHAIR — We particularly thank you for being here. As this is the first public hearing I will just
mention that we have had a significant number of written submissions that have come to the committee — 100
in total — which we accepted earlier today. You are all aware of the subject matter we have been looking at.
Today is our opportunity to hear more in regard to two of those submissions, one from VicRoads and the other
from RACV. We are also pleased to have a number of members in the public gallery, although I think you are
mostly from VicRoads — —

Ms PATTEN — A bit of an excursion today.

The CHAIR — Anyway, you are welcome. I hope you all, including members of the committee, have your
mobile phones switched to mute.

John and Robyn, thank you for coming along, for the presentation that you will make and for the opportunity
that we will have to have some dialogue in a moment. I want to thank VicRoads for the very substantial
submission that you have presented to us, something like 57 pages. So there has been a lot of information
presented to us in regard to this important inquiry.

In regard to the other details that I need to share with you, we have Hansard here taking note of the information
you share with us today. After today you will get a draft of Hansard’s notation of the hearing, which you will be
able to read over and correct if there are any incorrect interpretations. You clearly have parliamentary privilege
while you are talking to us today; I trust that you understand what that means and that that applies only while
you are in here and not for anything you might say outside of this room. I think that is the official part shared
with you. John, Robyn, I do not know who is going to speak first — —

Mr MERRITT — I will start with the opening remarks.

The CHAIR — John is going to speak first. Just provide your name again for the benefit of Hansard. We
have allocated 45 minutes, so you might like to make a presentation in regard to your written submission to us
and add any other comments you want to make, then we will obviously enter into some dialogue and we will
have some questions to ask you on that score. John, welcome.

Visual presentation shown.

Mr MERRITT — Thanks, Chair, and thanks to members of the committee. Thanks for the opportunity to
talk to our submission. I am John Merritt. I am the chief executive of VicRoads, and I am joined by Robyn
Seymour, who is the director of vehicle and road use policy for the organisation. The context of our submission
obviously is that VicRoads is the lead road safety agency under the Transport Integration Act. It is our job to
plan and build and maintain the road system, and it is our job to develop and make the application of the
government of the day’s policy in relation to road safety. The current government’s policy is to reduce our road
toll down to below 200 deaths by 2020.

Members of the committee may be aware that in the last calendar year we had 252 road-related fatalities and
some 5000 serious injuries and that last year’s road toll was four above the previous year, and that had been a
couple above the year before. So we have a target to get below 200. Year to date, we are running at about 17
above that number. So contrary to previous years, we have seen a flattening, if you like, and we are seeing
similar numbers or probably more deterioration in other states around the country.

My job as the chief executive is to be accountable for the road system that produces that result and to do
something about it. It translates into a couple of things that I brought with me that I have at the back of my desk
each day. The first is that every day I get a summary of what our road toll is, what it was against the same time
last year, who has died and where, and attached to that summary sheet is the one-pager provided by Victoria

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 2

Police which will tell me the name, the age, the time of day, the type of car they were driving and a couple of
paragraphs as to what happened. It is my job every day to read every one of these and to get a feel for what is
actually behind that number, and I try to imagine the story behind what has happened.

Those stories are reflected in the strategy to try to get this road toll down, and that strategy is what is called the
safe system approach. Our aim is to drive a strategy that is based on the safe system — safer drivers, safer
vehicles, safer roads and safer speeds. Inherent in that strategy is the acceptance that we have done
extraordinary things in a road safety setting over the last 40-odd years in Victoria — we are in the top 10 in the
world — but those countries that are better than we are, if our performance matched theirs, we would have
about 80 fewer deaths a year. So we are good, we have been terrific and we aspire to be as good as everybody
else because the stakes are really high. What is very clear in a safe system approach to road safety, though, is
that all the work that we have done around safer drivers and safer vehicles needs to be equally matched by the
fact that at the end of the day drivers are human and humans make mistakes.

I have one of these little numbers behind my desk because it is a wire rope barrier post that some of you would
be familiar with if you drive any distance on our roads. We have hundreds of kilometres of these wire rope
barriers across Victoria, and as part of the Towards Zero strategy that the government recently announced we
are funded to protect more than 300 more kilometres of our roads out there with these wire rope barriers. Of
course we have 22 555 kilometres of roads that we are responsible for. The beauty of these things, of course, is
that where we have them, they work.

This one has done its job. What I always like about these things — and we have industrial bins full of these in
all of our depots around the state — is that in the vast majority of cases when they work, the driver just drives
off. So they have fallen asleep, looked at the phone, dodged a kangaroo, run off the road, hit this, flattened it,
taken a deep breath and driven off. On the Hume Freeway since July last year we have had 75 different hits on
our wire rope barrier. Only four of those were identifiable to us. So every one of these things tells a story to us,
and it is our job to tell those stories as well because it is sort of lost out there as to what goes on. There is this
story, which is what goes wrong and when it really goes wrong, and then there is this story, where human
mistakes — just ordinary human errors of being tired, being distracted — play out, and people scratch the car,
take a deep breath and move on.

The significance of what is before this inquiry is that whilst everybody makes mistakes, some people make a lot
more mistakes than others.

Mr THOMPSON — We are not to be political here, please.

Mr MERRITT — Thank you for that. What we do know is that one cohort of our community seems to
make more mistakes than others — our young people, and particularly young boys or young men. What has
been in this folder, particularly in the last 12 months, I have found particularly sobering in this sense. Last year
18 young drivers between the ages of 18 and 20 were killed — we only had 8 the year before; in other words,
10 extra young lives were lost, and they were nearly all young men — and 14 of the 18 occurred in country
Victoria. What I found particularly chilling last year was that 11 passengers aged between 16 and 17 years were
killed, and that was 4 up from the previous year.

It preys so aggressively on vulnerable people, and it seems to us that one of the most vulnerable groups is young
men or those people who are with young men. In our submission you will see some references to what we know
about that, and what we have done. We have made fantastic strides in protecting young people, and particularly
young men, through the graduated licensing system — the requirement to do 120 hours of supervised training,
and that has produced some great results. We know that while young people are learning they are particularly
safe and their most vulnerable period is in that first 12 months. In many ways I see our job as trying to
chaperone that group through that period and to do everything we can, because we know that they will pick
up — their risk awareness will pick up, their skills will pick up — and the stories that I see here, which are just
usually stories of mistakes, they will make less of those as they get older.

What was really encouraging last year was that we had seven fewer deaths in that 21 to 25-year bracket. They
are annual stats, so they can bounce around a bit, but there is some encouragement with the work we are doing
in the graduated licensing system we have. So an integral part of our system is this 18-year licensed age. The
idea of the GLS is that it introduces new drivers to this fairly complicated task of driving in stages over an

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 3

extended period, and the graduated licensing system that we run in Victoria is recognised by every jurisdiction
in the country as being the leading example of a successful road safety policy.

That is really what is behind our submission to the inquiry: our position that the current minimum licensing age
should remain at 18 years. These young drivers are most at risk in that first solo year, and we know from many
years of research that the older they are when they get their licence, the lower the crash risk.

The research is helpful in identifying why young people are at higher risk. It identifies issues of inexperience,
that increased exposure to high-risk situations — being out at night or in difficult situations — and simply their
immaturity as well. And there is a body of research around that perception of risk that improves with age. It is
not that people are reckless; they just do not perceive the seriousness of what they are doing. I am familiar with
some members of the committee, because in an earlier life I was responsible for occupational health and safety
in the state as the executive director of WorkSafe, and much of our work was dealing with exactly the same
cohort of people, particularly young boys, going into work, in that 16-to-17-year age, and trying to nurse them
and chaperone them through into that period.

Our submission to the committee is fairly stark. It provides an estimate of what we think might be the
consequence of lowering the licensing age from 18 to 17 years. Research would tell us that we should expect an
additional 10 fatalities a year and that we should expect an additional 241 serious injuries and an additional
714 minor injuries each year. We will be happy to talk to that in the course of the discussion. In 2011 South
Australia did some work around considering increasing their licensing age from 17 to 18, and they estimated it
would result in a 20 per cent reduction in serious and fatal crashes involving 16 to 24-year-olds.

There is another aspect to this picture as well, and this has been really evident in our Towards Zero safe system
campaign — and that is, the remarkably high incidence of road trauma affecting country Victorians. Death rates
on country roads are four times higher than on metropolitan roads; 44 per cent of our fatalities are on high-speed
rural roads. They are often a different standard, a different environment, and speed limits are typically higher
than in urban environments. So we have this combination of young people who are more inclined to get their
licence earlier in the country because of necessity being in a higher risk environment as well.

A review of the coroner’s records, which is referenced in our submission, found that over 41 per cent of young
people killed in crashes in Victoria in that period from 2005 to 2008 were also employed in trade-based
occupations. You are starting to get that picture of that vulnerable group, which is not counterintuitive, I am
sure, to members of the committee.

We interpret from some of the committee’s brief that it is particularly interested in this issue of youth
unemployment and what we can do to give young workers more access to jobs. We have put a bit of effort into
researching this and seeing if there is in fact a link between licensing age and youth unemployment, and we
would encourage the committee to really closely scrutinise this suggestion that there is a link. We have certainly
found no evidence to support a reduction in the licensing age as a means of improving youth unemployment.
We have examined youth unemployment patterns among 17-year-olds and early school leavers in Victoria and
we have compared them to other states where the licensing age is 17, and we have found Victorian rates in
metro and rural areas were either lower or similar to other states.

It does not appear to us that a reduced licensing age is going to create more jobs. We understand that the motive
behind the committee’s work is genuine. It is an enormously important issue for that generation and the way in
which our society functions and we support people, but we do ask the committee to closely scrutinise this
position, because the average age of apprenticeships is also moving out across the country. Whereas once upon
a time apprentices were likely to take up these tasks at 16 and 17 years of age, now it is more in the mid-20s.

Finally, one of the issues that will come before the committee no doubt is that we are alone, if you like, as a
state with this licensing age. I have even heard some suggestion that that represents that we might be behind,
and of course our perspective is that it is because we are in front. We have, and continue to have, the best road
safety performance in the country. We do not benchmark ourselves against the rest of Australia; we benchmark
ourselves against the best in the world, because we have long been the best outcome in the country and we do
not see any attractiveness in what other states are doing in this area as a way forward.

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 4

Chair, I will rest at that overview of our submission. Robyn and I are delighted to be with the committee and
explore some of the concepts that we have put in there over whatever time we have available. Thank you very
much.

The CHAIR — Thank you, John. I presume we will have some questions for Robyn as we go along.

Ms PATTEN — Thank you, John and Robyn. It seemed in reading your submission that one of the most
stark studies that you looked at was the UK study, the 1995 study, that seemed to be probably the pre-eminent
one that you were considering in looking at the difference between 17 and 18-year-olds. Now, 1995, we were
discussing earlier, was quite a long time ago, and significant things have changed in that time. I am just
wondering: given that we have changes in safety, we have changes in our graduated licensing schemes — we
have all of those changes — was there something that was pinpointed in that study that really marked the
difference between a 17-year-old getting their licence and the 18-year-old? Because from what you said it is the
first 12 months of someone driving, and I wanted to know what that was.

Ms SEYMOUR — On the 17-year-old age group — there is a whole range of information and data on why
18 is better than 17 and why jurisdictions have made decisions to go with an 18 licensing age. That is one study.
There is also growing research looking at the behavioural neuroscience which talks about the frontal lobe and
our young people and their development particularly around risk perception and impulse control and the fact
that this really is not fully developed until the mid-20s. So a younger licensing age will mean that they have less
capacity to manage that impulse control; their decision-making will not be as well developed as at an older
licensing age.

One of the things that is really important is looking at how we balance the challenges between mobility and
safety and how you then determine what age is the appropriate age of licensing. Victoria has had a long history
in the 18 age group, and that is consistent with most of Europe. Britain have a 17-year-old age group, but in
recent work they have been doing they are considering whether or not they should increase their licensing age to
18.

South Australia have increased their licensing age from 161⁄2 to 17 but were really keen to see if they could
increase their licensing age to 18. They got a lot of support from the research agencies and within the policy
context, but the community support was not enough to convince the government at the time that they should
move to 18. That was really based on the independent work of CASR, which is a very good research agency in
South Australia, which looked at the potential benefit that would be gained from increasing the licensing age.
They found that for 16 to 24-year-olds they would expect to see a 20 per cent reduction in fatality and serious
injury, and there would be a 5 to 6 per cent reduction in their overall road toll in that state.

There has been quite a significant amount of work in a range of countries looking at how do we get that balance
right between allowing people the mobility they need to be able to do the things in their life that they need to do
and providing that protective environment, when we know that young people are really vulnerable, to ensure
that those people have long and productive lives. It is a really challenging issue.

Ms PATTEN — Yes. So really brain development is the crux of the matter.

Ms SEYMOUR — One of the things that I found really interesting when we were preparing this submission
is that if you look at the fatality rate per 100 000 population of 15 to 24-year-olds, the US fatality rate is 14.7 —
and in the US they have quite young licensing ages.

Ms PATTEN — Do they have any graduated licensing schemes?

Ms SEYMOUR — Actually they were the ones who first introduced graduated licensing schemes because
of the young licensing age, which has been quite useful in reducing their fatality rate to 14.7. The Australian
average is 8.6, and ours is 7.4. So the assumption that you could make, given we have all got graduated
licensing systems, is that our licensing age of 18 has provided this level of protection to our population that is
not available in the US or in the rest of Australia.

Ms PATTEN — Can I just clarify that? From what I understood, the graduated licensing scheme for
Victoria is probably one of the most rigid and — —

Ms SEYMOUR — It is very comprehensive.

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 5

 Ms PATTEN — Yes. So you would not consider that it was the high quality of our graduated licensing
system that gave us better figures there rather than our age?

Ms SEYMOUR — It is part of it. But a lot of states in the United States have very rigorous graduated
licensing systems as well, and in addition to what we have they also have night-time restrictions, because they
are very young, and to try to mitigate the risk they have implemented quite rigorous graduated licensing systems
as well. But for us one of our great strengths is our licensing age — that and 120 hours of driving practice. We
have always had an 18 licensing age, but since we implemented the new — well, 2007 and 2008 — change, the
graduated licensing system, we have seen a 31 per cent reduction in fatalities and serious injuries in our young
driver population. But our licensing system and our young drivers were trending down; we have just taken a
steeper reduction, which is important because young people represent such a significant component of our road
trauma. They are 21 per cent of our fatalities and only 13 per cent of our licensed drivers.

The CHAIR — If I can just follow on from Fiona, she was asking about the research that you had based
some of your comments on and the comment that John made — it is there in the report too — that if we
lowered the drivers licensing age, then it was suggested there would be 10 more fatalities in that age group and
the 241 serious injuries. They are clear statistics; what is the research that stats like that are based on?

Ms SEYMOUR — We have an explanation in the submission in terms of how we have quantified those
figures, and part of it is quite complex. Part of it is looking at what is our pattern of licensing age. What we are
seeing in Victoria and internationally is people are delaying their licensing. So by reducing our licensing age to
17 we have to take that into account in terms of what proportion of young people would we expect at 17 to take
up a licence, and at 18, 19, 21, and looking at models in other jurisdictions like New South Wales, what
percentage of 17-year-olds actually get their licence in New South Wales versus at 18 or 19. So it is modelling it
based on those patterns in other jurisdictions with a licensing age of 17. So it is being conservative, given we are
seeing delays in licensing, what really can we expect to see in terms of increases in trauma based on or given
those delays.

The CHAIR — So you are sort of saying that those figures are based on the comparison with New South
Wales as one of the key components.

Ms SEYMOUR — Looking at jurisdictions that have a licensing age of 17 and what is the uptake, the
proportion of young people of that age who are taking up licensing compared to 18 and 19, and then comparing
that to Victoria and then looking at our crash data to quantify how many 17-year-olds are likely to get licensed
and therefore, based on that, what would be our increase in trauma at 17, 18, 19 and so on — because it would
have a flow-on effect, not just for the 17 cohort.

The CHAIR — Could it not, rather than having the flow-on effect, simply bring the figures that we have at
the moment down a year? So in fact, sadly, you might still have the same number of people at the first year of
driving age die on the roads or have injuries, but then three years on in figures have balanced out because they
have not changed?

Ms SEYMOUR — No, because you have got a larger cohort of young drivers. We would expect that it
would be 10 deaths every year, not just for a couple of years until it balanced out, because those young people
are still at risk. We know that if you look at the risk for young drivers, really until they are 25 is where we see an
increased risk. So not only have you got a larger cohort of drivers; you have got a longer period of risk.

Mr DIXON — Just a quick one on that: we compare other jurisdictions and overseas, but sometimes that
comparison is hard in terms of distances travelled —

Ms SEYMOUR — Yes, that is true.

Mr DIXON — the safety and the condition of the road and the safety and condition of the cars that the
young people drive. To what extent do they impact on and distort the figures in the comparisons as compared to
just looking at age?

Ms SEYMOUR — One of the challenges for us is that our young people, particularly in rural areas, do
travel much greater distances on roads that, as John mentioned, are not as safe at higher speeds, which
inevitably increases their risk. The other thing we know about young people, certainly in Victoria and in other

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 6

jurisdictions in Australia, is that they tend to drive older cars, which means that the level of protection that is
provided to them, if something goes wrong, by those vehicles is really reduced. So we have got a compounding
of risk in terms of rural roads, the speeds they are travelling, their inexperience and the vehicles that they are
driving in. So from a safe system approach it is everything that we are trying to manage in terms of reducing our
risk and therefore the trauma that we see on our roads.

Mr TILLEY — I just want to continue the conversation that we are having. Was that almost an admission
that our road network is unsafe and that our fleet is too old? You were just saying that kids are driving older
cars.

Ms SEYMOUR — They are driving older cars.

Mr TILLEY — Speaking in the context of regional Victorians, in my experience they are quite roadworthy.
We are not talking about the old 200Bs and dungers that we probably grew up on.

Mr MERRITT — Robyn will talk about it more than me, but it is not that they are unroadworthy; they just
do not have the ABS, they do not have the airbags — they do not have any of those features which allow the
motor vehicle to be far more forgiving of simple error.

Mr TILLEY — Yes, I am qualifying some of that. If I may continue the conversation, from the evidence
that you have given us, when you mention the number of passenger fatalities in the state of Victoria, who were
the drivers? When you are talking about younger drivers, do you have the figures that suggest what age the
drivers were in those fatalities?

Ms SEYMOUR — We would need to get the specifics for you, but generally they are young drivers as well,
under 25.

Mr TILLEY — If we could qualify that, Robyn, that would be great.

Ms SEYMOUR — We can get the specifics from last year’s road toll.

Mr TILLEY — With the fatalities and the daily briefings that you get, John, do they give you details of the
state of origin of the driver, where the fatality falls in Victoria?

Mr MERRITT — It gives their home address. I have got that.

Mr TILLEY — A bit difficult on the border region, is it not?

Mr MERRITT — Perhaps, but it does tell me. I always check where they are from.

Mr TILLEY — Home address, yes.

Mr MERRITT — Obviously I am looking to see whether they are a stranger to the area or whether they are
familiar with the road. That is why I always check the address. It is staggering how many people are killed in an
area that they are familiar with, particularly in rural Victoria. There used to be a myth that it was somehow
visitors to the region; it is more likely than not that they are locals.

Mr TILLEY — Continuing on from that, you were talking about the impulse control and decision-making
of those. I want to talk about the cognitive abilities. Do you have any research or evidence on the difference
between the cognitive abilities of a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old?

Ms SEYMOUR — There is a really good study which we have referenced in our submission that we can
send you a copy of, which particularly looks at that issue in relation to driving. We can — —

The CHAIR — Which one is that?

Mr TILLEY — Do you know off the top of your head? If you do not, we can chase that up later.

Ms SEYMOUR — We can send through the full paper for you. It might be quicker for us to send through
the full paper than for me to find it in our report.

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 7

 Mr TILLEY — No. That is fine, if it will save you time.

Ms SEYMOUR — It is a good study and may be useful for the committee to have a look at.

Mr TILLEY — International?

Ms SEYMOUR — Yes.

Mr TILLEY — It is an international study. Do you recall what country it was?

Ms SEYMOUR — No.

Mr TILLEY — If you cannot recall, that is fine. We will chase that up.

Ms SEYMOUR — I will send it through to you.

Mr TILLEY — All right. Probably going on to another subject, if I may now, it is this: in relation to
exemptions in obtaining a drivers licence or a probationary licence in the state of Victoria, you may or may not
be aware that I had a constituent matter last year which, through the normal process, a ministerial through to the
minister for roads, was addressed, and thank you for addressing that — the VicRoads response. But it still
leaves a lot of unanswered questions in relation to policy and legislation. Can you confirm for me the business
rules around being able to obtain a Victorian probationary licence under the age of 18? Have you got some
detail around that specifically?

Ms SEYMOUR — The act does not provide any provisions for exemptions from the licensing age of 18 at
this point. There are no exemptions available to 18. There are exemptions available to the 120 hours and for the
period of holding a learner permit, if it can be demonstrated that for hardship reasons — for education,
employment or family reasons — the person really needs to have a licence. But there are no current provisions
within the act to provide exemptions to 18.

Mr TILLEY — But the act, as I understand it, does not actually specify age.

Ms SEYMOUR — It does.

Mr TILLEY — Does it?

Ms SEYMOUR — Yes — if I can find it.

Mr TILLEY — I am just unsure whether that was down to an interpretation or whether the act actually
specifies it.

Ms SEYMOUR — It specifies 18.

Mr TILLEY — If you could provide that to the committee later on, that would be helpful.

The CHAIR — You were saying something in that last explanation about the learner’s permit age. Did you
say something about the exemptions related to — —

Ms SEYMOUR — No, the 120 hours and the length of the minimum period that you can hold your learner
permit. We have a requirement now that if you are under 21 you must hold your learner permit for a minimum
of 12 months. So there is an exemption available from that 12-month period and from the 120 hours.

Mr TILLEY — Would you be prepared to provide the committee with a copy of the business rules in their
entirety, so that we can have a look at them?

Mr MERRITT — Yes, and perhaps some of the statistics around the number of applications that we get and
the numbers that we grant, to give you a picture of what sort of circumstances we would see. You have still got
to pass the driver test, ultimately, but there are certain numbers every month of people who just get into a
situation where they cannot complete the hours, there is a view that they can drive and they need to drive.

Ms SEYMOUR — So the Road Safety Act, section 19, under ‘Driver licences’ states under (1):

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 8

 The Corporation may, on the application of a person over the age of 18 years, grant a driver licence if it is satisfied that the
applicant is qualified to hold —

such a licence. So it is explicit in the act.

Mr TILLEY — Under the act, not the business rules

The CHAIR — You have to be over 18. Just to clarify, therefore there is no opportunity that you have at the
moment to provide exemptions for anybody under the age of 18?

Mr TILLEY — No mechanism for appeal?

Ms SEYMOUR — For 18, no.

Mr TILLEY — Or for any decision in relation to minimising the 120 hours driving experience?

Ms SEYMOUR — I would need to check with our registration and licensing area, but my understanding is
that there — —

Mr MERRITT — I am not aware of how they would make that representation, other than through the
normal channels, such as yourself.

The CHAIR — Can we come back to yours and perhaps go to Murray or Natalie if they have got questions,
or Khalil?

Mr EIDEH — I have a question for you, John. In your submission you note that in June 2014, 40 per cent of
18-year-olds held a Victorian drivers licence. Can you tell us how many of these licence-holders were also the
registered owners of the cars they were driving?

Mr MERRITT — We will have to take that on notice and find — I am just wondering how we would
compile — what proportion of those people who obtain their licence in their 18th year are registered owners of
a motor vehicle?

Mr EIDEH — Yes.

Mr MERRITT — I will have to take that on notice and see how we can assemble that. Is there a particular
angle of that that you are interested in that we could explore further?

Mr EIDEH — No, just that I would like to know how many are driving their own cars or — —

The CHAIR — Or if they were not the registered owner of the car whether they were at greater risk,
perhaps. If they own the car, perhaps they are safer drivers. I do not know. Is that a possibility?

Mr MERRITT — Right; whose car they are driving.

Ms SEYMOUR — Generally speaking, if young people are driving their parents’ cars, they tend to be
newer, safer cars, and if they are driving their own vehicles, they tend to be cheaper, older cars.

Mr MERRITT — Anecdotally I can certainly say from reading these reports it is unusual for a young
person to be in a fatality situation when they are in a modern car. I am just trying to think of one. I cannot think
of one that comes to mind that is revealed in the reports of the last 12 months.

Mr TILLEY — So the safety campaigns are not working, then, with the 5-star, ANCAP ratings and all
those sort of things — the sales, the push, the safety features? So all this is not working, then?

Mr MERRITT — They work fantastically; they just do not work for everybody. This was this whole issue.
The whole notion of Towards Zero is that we actually know how people die. We know that if we put them in a
safe car, if they are well trained, if the road has the right safety considerations and the speed is fit for the purpose
and they still make mistakes, they are survivable.

That is what underpins this notion that this does not have to happen. Every one of these that I have looked at, we
often pull it apart and say, ‘Right; someone has done something which on the surface appears quite risky’, and

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 9

the human reaction is to say, ‘What could you possibly do to stop that?’. But actually we think, ‘What if they
were in a different car? What if they slowed down? What if we had taken some other steps? What if? What if?’.
There are often times where we say, ‘Actually, they would have crashed, but we probably could have got them
a survivable situation from it’. So, yes, it does work; we just cannot get it to everybody at this point. Our job is
to extend this protection to as many people as we can.

Ms SULEYMAN — I do note that you have spoken about this in your presentation, but just in relation to
17-year-olds and the opportunity to leave school earlier, whether it is for employment, apprenticeships or
traineeships, do you think there is a link between leaving school early for job opportunities and the ability to
obtain a licence at 17? Is there a link between employment opportunities and reducing the age for the drivers
licence to 17?

Ms SEYMOUR — I am not sure I understand completely, so let me know if I am not answering your
question. There is a finite number of jobs that are available to young people who are unskilled and who leave
school and a finite number of employers available to take on those young people, so one of the things that is
important to understand with this whole issue is where is the problem. Is the problem that there are not enough
jobs for these young people? Is the problem that they cannot get to them? In terms of understanding the best
solution for how we support young people who leave school early, it is really understanding the problem. One
of the things that I think would be very important to understand is really quantifying how many young people,
where they are and what their challenges are in developing a solution. Is lowering the licensing age actually the
right solution for that problem, or is there another solution that might be more appropriate, given the risk for
these young people?

Ms SULEYMAN — Just to add, are there any studies or research in relation to — we hear about the regions
and the inequity of public transport where there may be an issue in relation to gaining employment and actually
being able to access employment. Do you have any facts? What I am trying to say is lowering the age to 17,
would that help in some of these areas?

Ms SEYMOUR — We are not experts in employment, so I would say that, but we looked to see what
information and studies we could find to understand unemployment and what were the barriers to employment.
We could not find a study that showed the link between licensing age and employment. I would say that
employment is not our area of expertise, so it may be worth exploring that with experts.

Mr THOMPSON — I have two questions. The first one: in relation to the more recent spike in accidents
among young drivers, have they been analysed to work out the reasons why? Did they involve excessive speed?
Did they occur late at night? Did they involve unlicensed driving as opposed to licensed driving? Did they
involve drugs or alcohol?

Ms SEYMOUR — Generally what we know about young driver crashes is that it is a mixture of different
issues. One big issue is actually inappropriate speed. So there is speeding, and there is inappropriate speed. One
of the things that comes up in these sorts of sheets all the time, which is really hard to look at, is that young
people have made a poor decision around their speed going around a corner. They have misjudged their speed.
So there is inappropriate speed, and there is speeding. That is definitely an issue for young drivers, and the
inappropriate speed is inexperience.

There are also other reasons why young people crash, and they are like those for other drivers — things like
fatigue, alcohol, drugs and driver distraction. In that respect they are not dissimilar to the broader population; it
is just that they have a higher risk. The other thing that young people often do, particularly early on in their Ps,
is make poor decisions around right-hand turns, judging speed and following distance, so we see quite a high
level of crashes around rear end and right-hand turns for young drivers as well.

Mr THOMPSON — What would you see as being the reasons why younger people in the country would,
by way of a higher proportion, obtain their licences at the age of 18 as opposed to those who are urban based?

Ms SEYMOUR — I would imagine it is because they have bigger distances to travel and it is not as easy for
them to get around unless they have their licence. I understand that RACV did some research, and I know that
you are seeing them next. One of the things that they looked at was the barriers in terms of transport for young
people. In looking at their study, one of the things they identified was that the main barrier for young people
was not employment, education or training; it was the social events. Generally mums and dads, for employment

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 10

and training purposes, or other community members around them, will support young people in those rural
areas to get to where they need to, but if they are living out on a farm, then their capacity to go and catch up
with their mates is more of a challenge for them. But that may be something you might like to pursue with
RACV later today.

Mr THOMPSON — Just going back to the first question too in terms of the increased number of deaths
amongst a small cohort, at the time that this brief was given for a parliamentary inquiry the immediate spike was
not necessarily helpful evidence for the purposes for which the inquiry was instituted by the member who
proposed it originally. If it was possible to get a further analysis of the breakdown of that spike in actual terms,
noting it is a smaller cohort — people from 10 to 18 or so — that may be of interest for our purposes later on.

Ms SEYMOUR — Ten years to 18 years?

Mr MERRITT — No, the jump from 10 to 18, I think you are referring to.

Mr THOMPSON — It is 10 to 18. There was a more recent spike, which is — —

Mr MERRITT — We could look at how many of them were multiples; we had a couple of multiples during
the year. We could isolate those. There will be some indication from the reports about whether alcohol or drugs
were a factor or whether speed was a factor. Is that what you are looking for?

Mr THOMPSON — Yes, just licensed or unlicensed and how that might compare, because if the spike
related to unlicensed drivers, then it does not bear as much on the focus of the inquiry.

Mr TILLEY — Back to me. You would probably appreciate that I have got significant experience in
enforcement on our roads. I spent a lot of time pulling over probationary drivers and learner drivers and
speaking to them about their driving. But I do represent an area on the border of New South Wales and Victoria,
and similarly along the South Australian border, were where we have youthful exuberance or whatever you
want to put it down to, wanting to go over to Aunty Mary’s and put that down in an address, and effectively
driving illegally in Victoria. But on the flip side of that, do we have any data or statistics from those South
Australian probationary driver or New South Wales probationary driver incidents that are occurring in Victoria?
Can we differentiate between those licences?

Ms SEYMOUR — Are you saying those Victorian drivers are getting licensed in New South Wales or
South Australia? I do not know how we would get that data.

Mr MERRITT — We will certainly inquire of our colleagues interstate perhaps if that would help, although
of course — —

The CHAIR — But I guess it would be fatalities or accidents that happen in Victoria where the young
drivers are found to be actually licensed in South Australia or Victoria.

Ms SEYMOUR — So the border crashes and fatalities.

Mr MERRITT — We will have a look and see if we can lift it off.

Mr TILLEY — On that note, it leads me to a conversation in relation to a whole range of things that we are
trying to achieve through national consistencies. Here we are, for whatever reason, seeing a number of
differences in the size of the road network population in comparison to Queensland, New South Wales and
Western Australia. Victoria’s road network is not quite as large. The demographics are a little bit different in
those outlying areas. I have got to ask the question, and I think these are the places where we need to challenge
ourselves a bit. Is it a case of either bloody-mindedness in relation to not wanting to shift in coming along with
national consistencies through COAG?

Ms SEYMOUR — That is a very good question. Austroads did some work on this looking at a GLS
framework, and that report is now published. The GLS framework really looked at the different models in
Australia and internationally and looked at what all the states and jurisdictions should be aiming towards.
Victoria is the closest to the exemplar model that we should be working towards, and that is the report that was
ticked off by all of the ministers in all the jurisdictions. So with that GLS framework, there are a couple of areas
where actually we could improve our licensing according to that framework, and they are potentially having a

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 11

night-time restriction and increasing our supervised driving for a learner at night. At the moment we have a
requirement for 10 hours. One of the items in the new road safety strategy and action plan is to look at whether
or not we should increase that to 20 hours. So they are the two elements of our current GLS that would be
considered as not meeting the exemplar model that is being promoted and encouraged in that national GLS
framework.

Mr TILLEY — Notwithstanding that, with the GLS still in its relative infancy, could you identify that there
would be no prohibition behind lowering the driving age either?

Ms SEYMOUR — The framework is saying that the states and territories should all be working towards an
18 licensing age, so maybe I am missing your question.

Mr MERRITT — It is hard to get away from the implications of widening the net.

Mr TILLEY — One more to cover off on this, and it is going back to the fact that we are now in the
58th Parliament. The Road Safety Committee did a report in the 57th Parliament specifically in relation to
trauma and — —

Mr MERRITT — That is right.

Mr TILLEY — The crash inquiry. Because the Parliament was prorogued and we have gone through
elections, there has not been a government response. Notwithstanding that, would either of you be familiar with
that report in relation to injuries and serious injury?

Ms SEYMOUR — At a high level, not at a detailed level. You might need to — —

Mr TILLEY — Any of the findings or recommendations, particularly in the willingness-to-pay model

where the recommendations were that that is absolutely not the best policy or way to proceed?

Ms SEYMOUR — I am familiar with that section of the report. In terms of the recommendations, do you
have a question in relation to that?

Mr TILLEY — No. Since the report has been tabled and with all the evidence that the committee did gather
during the inquiry, have you been able to peruse it and familiarise yourself with the findings of the Road Safety
Committee in that report particularly? But the thing is that both VicRoads and the TAC are doggedly continuing
down the willingness-to-pay model, which is in stark contrast to the recommendations or the findings of the
committee.

Mr MERRITT — When you say willingness to pay, you mean the community’s preparedness to accept
what imposts on the — —

Mr TILLEY — Yes.

Mr MERRITT — I am not that familiar with it.

One of the issues is you are right. There are jurisdictions like Victoria that have a better performance; there are
jurisdictions just like us that have a much worse performance. Often the defining characteristic is the
community’s acceptance or demand for this. All this stuff over the generations hangs off the community’s
intolerance or tolerance of trauma. Where there are jurisdictions that look just like us or better, there is that
really strong community that says, ‘We are not copping this’, whereas there are countries just like us where they
put up with things we would not dream of putting up with. It all comes down to: what will the community
demand in relation to it? All of these regimes all hang off that mandate. The committee is in that position of
trying to assess that mandate and calibrate it all the time, I think.

Mr TILLEY — There are absolutely no tricks. I just wondered whether you had had the opportunity since
that report was tabled. In closing, just with the process of the submissions, one of the challenges is what we are
finding with the process with the VicRoads submission. Did you have to go through the minister for roads
before it was tabled for a clearance from the government, the executive, before it came to the parliamentary
committee?

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 12

 Ms SEYMOUR — The minister has seen our submission. The process is that it is important that our
minister sees our submission, but we did not need formal approval.

Mr MERRITT — No. It is a VicRoads submission.

Ms SEYMOUR — It is a VicRoads submission.

The CHAIR — And there was no suggestion that the submission be changed, then, just to clarify that?

Ms SEYMOUR — Not at all. Not at all.

Mr MERRITT — No.

Mr TILLEY — I am not suggesting that. Have you been involved in submissions in the past?

Ms SEYMOUR — Yes.

Mr TILLEY — This model now was not the norm in the past. It was not going through the executive
government before it was meeting a parliamentary committee.

Mr MERRITT — I cannot comment on that, but anyway.

The CHAIR — I just want to tease out a little bit on this issue of potential exemptions. At the moment there
is no opportunity for exemptions. While the inquiry does relate to work reasons as to why some young people
aged 17 might want their licence, some of the submissions that have come back have sort of talked about how
their parents can get them to the job or to the training that they need, but there is significant hardship that they
do not relate to, and they think, ‘Well, John or Megan, who are 17, are good, sound people. If they had their
licence at 17, they could travel to their job without me having to get up that extra half-hour earlier or they could
maybe even pick up their brother from school on the way home and save us from the additional social stress or
whatever we have to go through’. Would there be an opportunity for the government to say, ‘We would like
you to investigate an opportunity for exemption for those sorts of cases’, where perhaps the young person would
not be able to drive at night but they were able to show that they were putting their family through significant
hardship by not being able to have their licence at 17. Perhaps public transport is not available for them to meet
those needs. Could VicRoads envisage some options that they could put back to the government if the
government said we would like you to investigate those sorts of options?

Ms PATTEN — Some were hypothetical, but — —

Mr MERRITT — Do you want to answer this one? Well, obviously if the committee makes a
recommendation and the government instructs us to do it, we will investigate it.

Mr TILLEY — You are ahead of us.

The CHAIR — Yes. All right.

Mr MERRITT — Our job will be to try to quantify what the price of that will be. That is what we are trying
to quantify in the submission, and whether it then breaks that down to a smaller number and what the
circumstances are. As I say, if you cast the net, you increase the trauma. How much of that are you prepared to
trade off against that improvement in access? That is the difficult task of the committee. We can only try to
quantify what the numbers are and try to bring that to life, because, as you are more aware than me, this is a
serious business that we are in here. The consequences of simple mistakes are so ridiculously out of proportion
to the mistakes that the young people make. That is the nature of the motor vehicle. It is incredibly cruel and
preys ruthlessly on vulnerable people, and I see that every day. It is not everybody. There are some who will
make much better choices than others, and they probably make them at younger ages, but this whole system is
really focused on not everybody, but the vulnerable, and it is an extraordinary challenge to protect and nurture
them through to a phase where they make better choices and better decisions.

I see it every time I go into one of our customer service centres. Today we will license around about two
hundred and twenty 18 to 21-year-olds. Because of the GLS we have quite a high pass rate. I stand behind the
counter in one of our customer service centres when the drive tester comes in, and I always ask, if it is a young

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 13

person, ‘Did they pass?’. In the main they do these days because of the practice. I like to see them told that they
have passed, because you can imagine that whole nervous scenario that plays out 250 to 260 times a day.
Behind that person is usually a parent. There is that moment of excitement about, ‘I passed’. It might have been
their first go, or it might have been something else. So there is that great relief, and as parents they get excited.
Then there is that next moment, which is, ‘Right. My child is just passing into a different phase of their life, and
my life as a parent is about to change significantly’. I see that every single time I go into one of our customer
service centres, and this happens 220 times a day, Monday to Friday. It is an incredible life passage that we are
dealing with in our business.

Mr TILLEY — So, John, you could say that the testing regime is not preparing our new drivers to pass a
test but it is actually testing their capacity to be able to drive a motor vehicle on our state’s road network.

Ms SEYMOUR — One of the really important parts of the implementation of our current graduated
licensing system is a really significant research project to develop a test that could differentiate between those
who have had lots of practice — around 120 hours — versus those who have not. John referred to the fact that
we have a high pass rate for our young drivers, and we do — it is about 80 per cent. Anyone aged over 21 who
does not have to get 120 hours has a pass rate of about 50 per cent.

Ms MERRITT — It changes significantly.

Ms SEYMOUR — Which is showing that the test is able to differentiate between those who are properly
prepared and those who are not.

The CHAIR — Fiona still has some issues.

Ms PATTEN — Just a quick segue from Geoff. For the New South Wales restricted provisional licence trial
that you mentioned in your submission, particularly for rural drivers, you do note that there was a very low
take-up rate of it. Do you have any other specifics or any other information about that?

Ms SEYMOUR — It was very anecdotal, the information, because the evaluation of that program has not
been completed, so it was just a telephone conversation with our colleagues in New South Wales. We have very
little information at this stage on that pilot. What they have indicated to us is that there has been a low uptake,
which is interesting, given the remoteness of west of the Newell.

Ms PATTEN — Well, that is right. It is probably the low population as well out there.

Ms SEYMOUR — True.

Ms PATTEN — And given downturns in economies and things, it is probably even lower. Just one last
one — I am hoping it was you — you were mentioning looking at further forms of carpooling or ridesharing.
Maybe that was the RACV’s — —

Ms SEYMOUR — It might have been. We did talk in the submission about other — —

Ms PATTEN — Well, there was the ConnectU program in Warrnambool.

Ms SEYMOUR — The ConnectU program, yes. So what we know in regional and rural communities is that
because of the challenges around mobility, those communities are actually very good where there is an
identified problem at looking for ways as a community they can address that. ConnectU is one example.
Universities also often look at mobility planning for young people. There are a range of programs, but we just
thought that there are interesting models that might be of interest to the committee.

The CHAIR — A couple of others since we have got you. We have gone over the 45 minutes, but — —

Mr THOMPSON — South Australian and New South Wales licence-holders regularly travel between their
home state and Victoria — for example, along Murray River border towns such as Mildura, Portland,
Yarrawonga and Wodonga. The committee understands that these people also work in Victoria, and some are
first-year licence-holders aged 17. Do you see a disadvantage for Victorian 17-year-olds who might not be able
to compete for the same jobs that are being undertaken by 17-year-olds from South Australia and New South
Wales, particularly in the trades and agricultural areas of the economy?

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 14

 Mr MERRITT — Well, it is not something we are really equipped to comment on.

Mr THOMPSON — That does not matter. One further question: what are the economic, social and
educational benefits, if any, of driver licensing in Victoria — that is, what are the quantified benefits of having a
drivers licence in Victoria?

Mr MERRITT — The quantified benefits.

Mr THOMPSON — Is that something you have had occasion to consider under regulatory impact
statements? It is an area of applied analysis, so just take it gently, and I will not say ‘on notice’.

Mr MERRITT — I cannot recall anything. I understand where your question is going in trying to find what
would be the other side of the equation in that piece. I am not aware of anything offhand, but we will certainly
have a look.

Ms SEYMOUR — We will have a look.

The CHAIR — The last one: just following on from Fiona’s question about ConnectU, which you
mentioned, and looking at some possible solutions, you mentioned that place-based solutions could work. I am
wondering whether we could get more information or who you would direct us to to look at further information
as to how you could look at promoting that more broadly and scaling it up around the state. For information on
those programs, who is the best person to get that sort of information from?

Ms SEYMOUR — I actually brought a copy of the ConnectU evaluation, which may provide information
on that program that would be useful for you.

The CHAIR — That might be useful so we can follow that up. We did go a little over our 45 minutes,
because we have that space ahead of us, so it was probably a very good opportunity to tease out in more detail
some of the issues. Obviously your submission is very important to us, and the opportunity to talk to you to
tease out many of these things has been very helpful. Thank you for your time. It has been much appreciated.

Witnesses withdrew.

15 June 2016 Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee 15