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Ontario auditor questions crash rates in BDE driver education program


December 12, 2007   by Canadian Underwriter


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Ontario’s ministry of transportation has not followed up on why novice drivers enrolled in the province’s Beginner Driver Education (BDE) program crash at higher rates than drivers who did not participate in the program, Ontario’s auditor general says.
In his 2007 annual report, Ontario auditor general Jim McCarter noted that between 2000 and 2005, G2-licensed drivers in Ontario’s graduated license program have been involved in collisions 24-62% more often than drivers who did not take the BDE program.
According to ministry records, of approximately 218,000 new drivers each year, about 120,000 (55%) take the ministry-administered BDE course. Under this program, driving schools that meet specified requirements can become ministry-approved course providers.
The auditor’s report notes that drivers with BDE certificates were 24% more likely in 2000 to become involved in collisions than those drivers who didn’t have BDE certificates. The percentage increases steadily each year until 2005, when BDE-trained drivers were involved in collisions 62% more often than drivers without their BDE certificates.
The auditor flagged these statistics to the ministry, which, the auditor observed in his report, had not evaluated the effectiveness of the BDE program. To date, the ministry still has not followed up, the auditor’s report says.
The auditor cited some possible reasons for the higher collision rates:
drivers who took advantage of the reduction in their supervised training period and took the driving test up to four months earlier had a higher collision involvement rate than those who did not;
external stakeholders interviewed by the auditor “expressed concerns about the sale of driver-education certificates by unscrupulous driving schools to students who have not completed the required driver education;” and
the ministry’s inspection of BDE driving schools, the auditor said, “had not focused on ensuring that the training was in accordance with the ministry-approved curriculum.”


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