The new Road Safety Strategy has landed. The reaction has been loud, emotional, and often misdirected.

In this episode, Terry Cook doesn’t break down policy line by line or defend government decisions. Instead, he slows the conversation down and explores what this moment really represents for driving instructors.

This strategy isn’t just a set of proposals. It’s a cultural signal, a shift in how learning to drive, risk, responsibility, and readiness are being discussed publicly and politically for the first time in over a decade.

Terry examines why the UK hasn’t gone backwards on road safety, but has stood still while others improved. He challenges the idea that teaching to pass a test is enough, explores why defensiveness from instructors is understandable but limiting, and explains why this moment gives instructors permission to step into a clearer, more confident role.

Listeners don’t have to agree with everything in the strategy. But they do need to decide how they respond to it.

This episode is about opportunity, leadership, and choosing where to stand as the conversation around road safety moves forward.

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The Instructor Podcast with Terry Cook talking with leaders, innovators, experts and game changers about what drives them.

Welcome to the Instructor Podcast.

This is a show that helps you become an even more awesome driving instructor and run a better driving school.

As always, I am your splendid host, Terry Cook.

I'm delighted to be here.

Even more divided that you have chosen to listen because today we are talking about the brand new road safety strategy that has recently been released.

Now, this is not a line by line breakdown of that strategy.

Instead, we're talking about the opportunity that this creates for driving instructors.

Now, there will be another episode where I bring in an academic voice into this conversation.

We really dig into the evidence, the nuance, what works, what doesn't, and where the gaps are.

That episode will be about detail.

This one is about direction.

It's about culture.

It's about how learning Strive is being talked about again, publicly and politically for the first time in decades.

And it's about what that gives instructors permission to do next.

But I also want to say this.

The changes I've been making to the Instructor Podcast premium, now known as Instructor Performance Psychology, are directly related to this conversation.

IPP isn't just about in car techniques or passing standards checks.

It's about confidence and decision making, mindset, communication, business thinking, and moving away from teaching purely for test.

The structure has evolved to reflect that.

You know, there's now a clearer split between on demand learning and interactive development because CPD without action is just entertainment.

So if this episode resonates with you, IPP is where we take these conversations further properly, honestly, without too much noise, and you even get them ad free and early.

To find out more, head to www.patreon.com instructor or use the link in the show notes.

But for now, let's get stuck into this episode.

Hopefully you're aware that there has been a new road safety strategy that' come out this week.

If you're not, stick with it.

I'll leave a description in the episode description, but there's been a lot of noise about it and there's been hot takes and outrage and applause, headlines, comments, all of it.

Some people are furious, some are celebrating.

Lots of people are reacting without actually reading what's been put out.

So I want to be really clear from the start of this episode that this is not me defending government, it's not me attacking government, and it's definitely not me telling you what to think.

What I want to talk about is what this moment represents for us as driving instructors.

Because when I first read this strategy.

My first reaction wasn't anger or anything like that, it was.

It was relief and honestly, some excitement.

I'd been looking forward to this.

I've been excited about this.

Not because everything in it is perfect, because it isn't.

And not because it goes far enough, because in places it doesn't.

But because for the first time in a long time, it feels like someone has finally said out loud, standing still isn't good enough anymore.

We haven't necessarily gone backwards in road safety, but we have been standing still for a very long time.

This strategy feels like it's a bit of a kick up the backside and yes, it's overdue, but I'd rather overdue than never now.

I also knew instantly that this road safety strategy would be misrepresented.

And it has been.

The DVSA are getting blamed for things that aren't DVSA decisions.

Consultations are being talked about as if the law starting tomorrow and nanny state is being thrown around with out any thought as to what's actually being proposed.

And of course, content creators on social media are using this for clickbait.

So before anyone switches off thinking, oh, here we go, let me just say this.

You don't have to agree with everything in this strategy.

You don't have to like all of it.

You don't have to trust politicians to still recognize that something important is happening here.

Because this really isn't about policy, it's about direction.

It's about culture, and it's about what this gives us as instructors permission to do next.

And that's what I want to talk about today.

And to understand why this strategy exists, we need to step back for a minute, because this hasn't come out of nowhere.

You know, England has traditionally been seen as a world leader in road safety, and for a long time, that reputation was deserved.

But over the last decade or so, something's changed.

Or if we're being honest, something hasn't changed.

We didn't start doing everything wrong.

We didn't abandon enforcement or education.

We didn't stop caring about road safety.

But we stood still.

And that's the context that this strategy sits in.

It's not saying that everything's suddenly worse or driving instructor have failed.

And it's not pretending that personal responsibility doesn't matter.

In fact, that responsibility sits right at the heart of what this is.

One of the phrases you'll hear a lot is that human beings make mistakes.

And that's true, but it's also not an excuse.

Human error explains why collisions happen.

It does not excuse the dangerous behavior though.

So speeding, drinking, drug driving, mobile phone use, not wearing seat belts.

These aren't inevitable mistakes, the choices.

And the strategy is very clear that those choices still carry consequences.

That's where the safe system comes in.

Even when people are trying to do the right thing, errors still happen.

Misjudgment, lapses, moments of inattention.

When the consequences of one mistake is death or life changing industry, the system has failed to provide enough protection.

And that's why I was so pleased to see the safe system at the heart of this road safety strategy.

Because the safe system isn't about removing responsibility from road users.

It's about sharing responsibility across the five pillars.

Safe roads, safe road users, safe speeds, safe vehicles and effective post crash care.

All five matter and none of them work in isolation.

Safe road users still need to be competent, alert, sober, insured and fit to drive.

Safe roads need to reduce the chance of mistakes turn into tragedies.

Safe speeds determine whether someone walks away or doesn't walk away at all.

Safe vehicles help absorb, impact and prevent collisions in the first place.

And post crash care determine survival when everything else has gone wrong.

So in the safe system, responsibility just doesn't disappear, it becomes layered.

Drivers are responsible for what's within their control.

The safe system is responsible for not being so brittle that one mistake ends a life.

And I think that distinction matters.

And this is also why targets in this strategy are significant.

That's not business as usual.

That's an acknowledgement that accepting current levels of harm is no longer acceptable.

You can be skeptical about whether those targets were met, and that's fair.

But dismissing the intent misses what's changing.

This strategy draws a clear line.

Road death is not inevitable.

Serious injury isn't an acceptable side effect of driving.

And once that line is drawn, the conversation shifts.

The question stops being who can we blame?

And becomes what do we need to change, individually and collectively?

Throughout this episode and going forward, you'll hear me talk a lot about this idea of culture.

Because honestly, that's where road safety lives or dies.

You know, policies matter, laws matter, enforcement matters, but culture decides wherever any of that actually lands.

And this strategy, more than anything else, is a cultural signal.

It's government saying quite plainly the way we think about learning to drive, passing a test and what happens after that isn't working well enough anymore.

That's a big shift, because for decades, the cultural story around driving has been simple.

Learn as quick as possible, pass a test, and then you're basically on your own.

We've all heard people say that you learn to drive.

Once you pass your test, you know, the test becomes the finish line.

And the problem is the data just doesn't back it up.

Young drivers are still massively overrepresented in serious and failed collisions.

Motorcyclists are still dying at disproportionate rates.

And the riskiest period of someone's driving life is often immediately out of their past.

So this strategy is the first time in a long time that government has really acknowledged that gap, especially publicly.

The minimum learning period is the perfect example of that.

On its own, it's not magic.

It will suddenly make everyone safer.

And let's be honest, a lot of us, including me, would have liked something post test, not just pre test, but culturally, it does say something important.

Learning to drive takes time.

Experience matters.

Rushing people through a system has consequences.

And for instructors, that's huge because it backs up conversations many of us have been having for years with learners, with parents, and sometimes just with ourselves.

You know that awkward moment when you're thinking, they can probably pass a test, but are they actually ready?

Well, this strategy gives way to that hesitation.

It tells the public this isn't the instructors being awkward or trying to drag lessons out or making things harder to earn extra money.

It's about risk.

But this is the bit where I think some instructors will struggle, because this strategy doesn't just validate what we've been saying, it also raises the question of what our role actually is.

Because if the problem is cultural, if the issue is how people think about driving, then instructors aren't neutral in that.

We shape the habits, we shape the attitudes, and we shape what good enough looks like.

And that doesn't mean that this strategy exists because the instructor's doing a bad job.

In fact, driving instructors are even mentioned in this strategy, which is a whole different problem, which I may come to another time.

But it does mean the job has evolved.

Teaching someone how to pass a driving test has never been the full picture, but it's been allowed to feel like it.

And culturally, that's what this challenge is.

This is where some of the defensiveness comes from, because it's much easier to hear this as blame than it is to hear it as responsibility.

And I get that most of us didn't come into this job with a background in education or psychology or road safety policy.

I certainly didn't.

We learned, we adapted, and we evolved over time.

But the profession as a whole hasn't always evolved at the same pace.

So when instructors hear talk of minimum learning periods, lifelong learning, or post test risk, it can feel like the goal posts have been moved a bit, when in reality, they've always been there with maybe just missing the open goal sometimes.

And that's why I keep calling this an opportunity.

It's not an attack, it's not a crackdown.

It's an opportunity.

An opportunity to stop apologizing for longer learning, to stop pretending that the test is the job.

An opportunity to say with confidence that this is about keeping people alive.

And culturally, once that conversation starts to shift, everything else follows.

Now, this is probably a bit where some people will feel a bit uneasy, and I want to acknowledge that straight away, because whenever something like this comes out, the instinctive reaction for a lot of instructors is defensiveness.

Not because they don't care about road safety, not because they're bad instructors, because it can feel like the finger is being pointed.

And it has done for a long time by the DVSA talking about the.

The driving test backlog and essentially blaming us for some of it.

But I don't think that's what's happening here.

I do think this strategy asks a question that we don't like answering.

You know, what is this job really?

Is the job to help someone pass a driving test, or is the job to help someone survive the first few years of driving and beyond?

Well, those two things overlap, but they're not the same.

And if we're honest with ourselves as a profession, we've allowed the test to become the center of what we do.

Test routes, mock tests, tweaking the way people drive to meet the expectations of examiners.

We're being honest.

It's understandable, it's familiar, and for a long time, culturally rewarded.

Parents want a pass, learners want a pass.

Social media celebrates a pass.

Very few people celebrate readiness.

And I think that's what this strategy exposes, because when the government starts talking about minimum learning periods, lifelong learning, post test risk, it challenges that if you can pass, you're ready mentality.

Now, here's where the defensiveness really kicks in.

A lot of instructors hear that, and they think, so you're saying I'm not doing my job properly.

That's not what I hear.

What I hear is the environment you're working in has been pushing you in the wrong direction for years.

And I think that's a very different thing.

Most instructors didn't come into this job with a grand plan to shape road Safety, culture.

I think most came into it because life changed.

A redundancy or burnout or some kind of flexibility or needing control of the job you were doing.

Well, the thinking side of the job often comes later.

It evolves.

Mine certainly did.

So when this strategy talks about culture change, it's not rewriting history, it's is catching up with reality.

But there is something here that we can't avoid.

If teaching to pass a test is still the primary focus of what we do, then we are part of the problem.

Even if we well intentioned well, that doesn't make anyone a villain.

But it does mean we have a choice.

And I think there's another fear underneath all this and that we don't talk about enough.

It's not just about pride or blame.

It's about money and it's about survival.

Because if instructors publicly embrace longer learning, deeper teaching, and move away from PASS as fast as possible, there is a worry that the public will go elsewhere.

You know, cheaper lessons, quicker passes, private practice, someone will tell them what they want to hear.

And in the short term, that fear isn't irrational.

But in the long term, that's exactly how we stay stuck.

If the profession keeps racing to the bottom, the culture will not change, it will harden.

But this strategy starts cracking the open.

It gives instructors permission to say, no, we're not rushing this.

Actually, no, this takes time.

Passing a test isn't the end of this journey.

And yeah, some instructors won't come along with that.

That's the reality.

But leadership, real leadership, isn't about waiting until everyone agrees.

It's about doing what you stand for and being visible about it.

And that doesn't mean podcasts, blogs, or become an influencer.

Sometimes it's as simple as not staying silent, not piling on with the outrage, or not undermining the conversation before it's even started.

Because whether we like it or not, us instructors, we do help set the tone.

And right now, that tone matters.

I said outrage there.

And I think there's one thing that's been thrown around a lot since this strategy landed, and you probably heard it already, nanny state.

It usually comes out when enforcement is mentioned.

You know, seat belts, drink, drive limits, license suspensions.

And I think that reaction is worth slowing down and looking at properly because it tells us something about how driving is still viewed culturally.

We like to talk about personal responsibility when it suits us.

You know, we'll say, I know what I'm doing.

I've been driving for years.

If I make a mistake, it's on Me.

But that logic only works right up until your mistake affects someone else.

And on the road it almost always does.

The idea of wearing a seat belt or driving sober, or being asked not to use your phone when driving is somehow an attack on freedom.

Well, that's not really about freedom.

It's about control.

Driving is one of the last places where people feel completely autonomous.

No boss, no supervisor, no one watching.

And for a lot of people, the car isn't just transport.

It's an identity, independence and competence.

And that's why any hint of restriction can feel personal.

But here's the thing.

Enforcement doesn't exist because people are stupid.

It exists because behaviour doesn't change on its own.

If education alone worked, we wouldn't still have people on phones at the wheel.

Enforcement isn't the opposite of responsibility is what supports it.

It draws a boundary where choice starts to become harm.

And this strategy is actually very clear on that.

Human error explains why collisions happen.

It doesn't excuse dangerous behavior.

Now, there's a big difference between a momentary misjudgment and choosing to drive tired, impaired, distracted or unbelted.

Lumping all of that together under mistakes happen does everyone a disservice.

Especially the people who are hurt or killed as a result.

That's why I'm comfortable saying that enforcement isn't a last resort.

It's a core part of the system.

Not because we want to punish drivers, but because we want to protect people.

And this is where I think this conversation needs to mature a little bit.

The question isn't should government tell people what to do?

The real question is, at what point does personal choice stop being personal?

Because on a shared road network, there's no such thing as a completely private decision.

And as instructors, we sit right in the middle of that conversation.

We're often the ones explaining why seatbelts matter, why speed matters, why just this once is a risky way of thinking.

So when enforcement is tightened, it shouldn't feel like it undermines our role.

If anything, it reinforces says this stuff you've been explaining for years, it matters.

And again, this isn't about agreeing with every single proposal in the strategy.

It's about recognizing that road safety doesn't work on goodwill alone.

It works when responsibility is clear, boundaries are consistent and consequences are understood.

That's not a nanny state, that's a grown up system dealing with grown up risk.

But earlier on I mentioned leadership.

And I think when we talk about leadership, a lot of instructors potentially switch off because it sounds big, it sounds public, it sounds like something you need confidence, time, or a platform for.

But most instructors are just trying to get through the week.

But leadership in moments like this isn't about being loud.

It's not about becoming a spokesperson, and it's definitely not about having all the answers.

Right now, leadership can be surprisingly small.

It can look like not piling on when the outrage starts.

It can look like sharing the actual strategy, not just a clickbait headline about can look like saying to a learner or a parent, this is why learning properly matters.

That's it.

Just making the conversation visible.

Because silence has an effect, too.

When us instructors stay quiet, the loudest voices shape the narrative.

And let's be honest, they're rarely the most informed ones.

What worries me more than disagreement, though, is.

Is apathy or worse, professionals undermining the conversation before he's even had a chance to breathe.

You don't need to defend every line of the strategy to show leadership.

You don't need to agree with everything in it.

But you do need to decide whether you're comfortable.

And others decide what this profession stands for.

So for most instructors, leadership is simply saying this matters, and then just letting that stand.

But there's a big difference between everyday leadership and industry leadership, and it's important not to confuse the two.

Everyday instructor leadership is visibility.

It's not hiding.

It's not shrugging.

It's not defaulting to this won't work.

Industry leadership goes further.

That's about explaining nuance.

It's translating policy into reality, calling out misinformation, and sometimes saying the things that people don't like hearing.

But not everyone needs to do that.

In fact, I'd say the biggest cultural shifts usually don't come about from a few loud voices.

They come about from lots of quiet, consistent voices, from instructors who stop apologizing for the longer learning, who stop pretending the test is the end goal, who stop selling speed as some kind of value.

That's how expectations change.

And that's why this moment matters, because the strategy doesn't force you to lead.

It gives you permission.

Permission again, to say, we're doing this job properly.

This takes time.

Permission to say, passing the test isn't the whole job.

And once that permission exists, publicly choosing not to use it becomes a decision in itself.

So leadership doesn't have to be dramatic.

Sometimes you're just being seen on the right side of the conversation.

There's one last piece of this that I think sits underneath a lot of the reaction we've seen, and it's not really about policy at all.

In the UK we talk a lot about freedom, especially recently.

And for a lot of people, driving is where that freedom feels the most real.

You know, there's an old phrase about an Englishman's castle being his home.

Well, I don't think that's true anymore.

I think for many people, not just the English, the car is the castle.

It's private and familiar and it's somewhere people feel competent and in charge.

And when something threatens that, whether it's technology, enforcement or a suggestion that we might need to slow down and rethink how we learn, it feels personal.

No, not logical, but personal.

That's why arguments like I've never crashed carry so much weight of people.

They're not really evidence based statements, they're identity statements.

This works for me.

I'm a good driver, I know what I'm doing.

And the uncomfortable bit of that is a lot of people confuse luck with skill.

Most drivers will go their whole lives without a serious collision, not because they're an exceptional driver, but because the odds happen to fall in their favor.

That's not an accusation, it's just reality.

And this safe system idea and this strategy challenges that comfort.

It says, what if the system didn't rely on you being perfect all the time?

What if it planned for error instead of pretending it won't happen?

And for some people that sounds like a loss of freedom, but I think it's worth asking a different question.

Is it really freedom if the cost is thousands of deaths and life changing injuries every year?

Or is that just familiarity we've learned to accept?

Now this is where the conversation with the public needs care.

Because you can't shout people out of that mindset, you can't shame them into it, and you can't expect them to read your 60 page strategy document and suddenly change how they feel about driving.

What we can do, and what I would say instructors are uniquely placed to do, is explain it in human terms.

Not rules or targets or punishment, but risk probability and the reality that driving has never been as simple as we like to pretend it is.

That's why I don't see this strategy as anti driver.

I see as anti complacency.

And there's a big difference.

Because once we stop treating the car like a castle, something untouchable and unquestionable, we can start treating driving like what it actually is.

A shared responsibility in a shared space with very real consequences.

And that shift, that's cultural, not political.

So where does that leave us?

For me, this strategy isn't something to cheerlead.

And it's not something to panic about either.

It's a moment.

A moment where the direction of travel has been made clear.

Road safety is being talked about seriously.

Risk is being acknowledged openly.

And the idea that passing a test equals readiness, I think, is kind of being challenged.

Again, that doesn't force anyone to change.

No one's coming into your car tomorrow telling you how to teach.

But it does give permission.

Again, I keep using that word, permission to slow things down, to push back on rushing, permission to say we're doing this properly.

And I think that's the big opportunity.

Not to argue about policy, not to pick sides or to win comment sections in Facebook, but to decide individually what kind of instructor you want to be as this becomes normal.

Because it will become normal.

Longer learning, more emphasis on risk.

More focus on what happens after the test, not just before.

You can resist that.

You can ignore it, or you can step into it.

None of those choices make you a bad person, but they do lead to different futures for the profession.

I'm not expecting everyone to agree with me, and I'm not expecting everyone to come along, but I do think instructors have a choice right now.

We can be part of shaping how this lands, or we can let others do it for us.

In the next episode, I'm going to bring an academic voice into this conversation, someone who lives in the data and evidence and the nuance to really dig into what works, what doesn't, where that and where the gaps still are.

This episode was about positioning and context, about recognizing an opportunity when it appears.

So I'll leave you with this.

If this strategy works, not perfectly, not overnight, but well enough, what do you want your role in that to have been?

Because doing nothing is still an answer.

And sometimes the most important step isn't about shouting louder, it's choosing where you stand for now, less key racing standards.

The instructor podcast with Terry Cook, talking with leaders, innovators, experts and game changers about what drives them.