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RAC welcomes keys2drive funding

09 November 2007

WA's leading member organisation the RAC has welcomed today's announcement by Shadow Minister for Transport Martin Ferguson that Federal Labor will support the innovative driver education programme keys2drive.  

RAC Executive Manager for Member Advocacy, David Moir, said the RAC had been running an extremely successful pilot similar to the keys2drive programme in WA over the past year and that Labor's $17million pledge for national support to the programme was a positive step.

"This programme will improve road safety by better educating young drivers while they are learning to drive," said Mr Moir.

Mr Moir said that the keys2drive programme was an important but relatively small part of the investment needed to fix road safety in WA and he was looking forward to Labor finalising their commitments to road funding through the AusLink 2 programme.

Labor will support the development of the programme in all national motoring clubs, offering learner drivers one professional driving lesson and an interactive CD with live action hazard perception sessions, as well as access to nationally accredited driving instructors through a one-stop-shop novice driver website at keys2drive.rac.com.au.

The free lesson will be federally funded, will need to be taken with an accredited driving instructor and must be attended by one of the driver's parents.

The lesson is tailored to give learners basic driving tips and to give parents skills on how to be a good supervisor.

"keys2drive will provide an extra incentive for learners to get more on-road experience and will assist supervising drivers to become better informed and more confident in undertaking their important role.  In many cases the supervisor may have had no involvement with driver education and training for many years," said Mr Moir.

"Our research shows that the community is very supportive of efforts to improve driver education and training. Some 84 per cent of people surveyed nationally believe more driver education and training is either extremely or very important in preventing road deaths and injuries.

"The States have now introduced a requirement that learners obtain a minimum number of hours of on-road driving experience. We believe that keys2drive will assist learners in achieving these hours.  

"We welcome the Coalition's announcement of this important national road safety initiative and look forward to working closely with the driver training industry and Government in implementing the programme."

More information on the keys2drive programme is available at keys2drive.rac.com.au.