Graduated Driving Licensing isn’t the problem. Our refusal to talk about it is

By Rebecca Morris, Road Safety PR Specialist & Campaigner

As a road safety marketing and PR professional of more than 20 years, I’ve had the privilege - and the heartbreak - of working with families whose lives have been torn apart by road crashes involving young drivers. The trauma is lasting. The grief doesn’t fade. And the injustice runs deep, because these crashes are not random tragedies - they are preventable.

I’ve supported and stood beside incredible parents from Forget-me-not Families Uniting - a group that no one wants to be part of, yet which grows year on year. Each member has lost a son or daughter in a crash. Many of those young people were passengers. Some were just beginning their adult lives. All of them should still be here.

So when the UK Government says it is “not considering Graduated Driving Licensing” - as if GDL is some fixed, inflexible concept - it feels like a slap in the face to every parent still fighting for change in their child’s name.

GDL is not one-size-fits-all

Let’s be clear: GDL is not one-size-fits-all. It’s not a branded programme. It’s not a rigid rulebook. It is - and always has been - a concept: a phased approach to support newly qualified drivers through the most dangerous months of their driving lives.

Other countries have found ways to make it work. In Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and many US states, GDL has saved lives. Not just in theory – but in reality. Fatal crashes involving new drivers have dropped by up to 40%. That’s not policy. That’s people. Young people, still alive.

So why does the term itself feel so politically toxic in Britain? Why are we afraid to talk about it honestly?

Is it because we’ve backed ourselves into a rhetorical corner? We’ve spent so long talking about “freedom” on the roads that we forget freedom should never come at the cost of a child’s life. We’ve become so reliant on cars that road harm has been normalised – tolerated in a way no other form of preventable trauma would ever be.

Road crime is real crime

We rightly treat knife crime as a public health crisis. Yet road crime - speeding, careless driving, illegal use of phones - is still too often dismissed as accidental. A tragic blip. Bad luck. When it’s not. It’s systemic, and the system needs fixing.

I’ve known families professionally and personally whose lives were changed in an instant. A knock on the door. A call in the middle of the night. A child who doesn’t come home. The impact ripples out - to siblings, friends, classmates, entire communities. There is no going back.

We talk about road danger as if it’s a price we have to pay to keep the country moving. But this is a man-made epidemic. And unlike many epidemics, we already have the tools to make it better. GDL is one of them.

What frustrates me just as much is the way local authorities are left trying to pick up the pieces. While national Government keeps Vision Zero at arm’s length, councils and road safety partnerships are left to “aspire” to zero. They sign up to it because they care. But without central support, funding, legislation – what does it even mean?

A strategy without power is just a slogan

It’s time we admitted that road harm is a public health crisis – just as urgent, just as worthy of political attention, as any other form of avoidable death.

And it’s time we stopped letting semantics get in the way of progress.

Call it what you like – a Graduated Licensing Scheme, a Phased Driver Programme, or simply a Safer Start. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we act.

To every parent still fighting, still speaking, still standing tall in the face of unimaginable loss - I see you. I stand with you. And I will keep using my voice to help amplify yours.

Let’s stop tolerating the intolerable.

Let’s rethink what road safety really means.