Who and Where are the Safest Young People on the Roads of Spain?

Young drivers are amongst the highest risk group on the road, in terms of likelihood to be involved in a serious incident, mostly due to their inexperience, but sometimes motivated by bravado and pure immaturity.

However, according to a recent study, it is possible to identify where the safest drivers of this group reside and, their profile.

The report, “III Informe sobre la juventud al volante: Por qué es necesario ser prudente”, or the third report relating to youth at the wheel and the need to be prudent, it is girls from Soria in the centre-north of the country who are the best young drivers in Spain, and those who suffer the least serious incidents from all over the country.

The report, prepared by Somos Seguros, also finds young people from Cuenca in second place, and those from Huesca in third.

The analysis, compiled from the 2017 report, Estadística de Seguros de Automóviles, confirms the group to be involved in more incidents with injury than any other, in fact, the probability that a young person has a mishap of these characteristics is 1.8 times greater than that suffered by a person over 35.

The study has had a methodology in which incidents are differentiated according to their severity. Thus, those claims where there was someone injured or deceased have been considered serious. Meanwhile, minor incidents are those in which only material damage occurred. Likewise, an evaluation system from 1 to 10 has been established to measure the probability of incident among young people from the different provinces, weighing the number of incidents that occurred based on the number of vehicles registered in each territory.

The report reflects how the probability of having a mishap is decreasing as experience is gained behind the wheel. A young person who has held a licence for one year is (statistically) 4 times more likely to have a serious traffic incident than an experienced driver, this difference drops to 1.8 times when they reach 10 years of driving experience.

As for the vehicles involved in collisions, those with two wheels tend to suffer more serious incidents. The analysis shows that a driver under 35 and with less than one year of experience is 7.5 times more likely to suffer a serious incident than a person who has been driving this type of vehicle for more than a decade.