The Grill Team’s Mark “MG” Geyer took his teenage son Logan to Eastern Creek to visit Ian Luff’s Motivational Driving Academy yesterday to show him just how long it takes to come to a complete stop when travelling at 80km/hour.

The Grill Team spoke to Senior Constable Kerry Boyd, and Sergeant Brett Samuels, two members of the Sydney Metropolitan Crash Investigation Unit, about driver safety and the key risk factors when it comes to car fatalities.

MG is passionate about road safety, and improving the skills of our most vulnerable – young drivers.  He’s aiming to highlight the importance of defensive driving skills, and is keen for it to become a government initiative. 

Here’s part of the chat between MG and Matty Johns discussing teenager safety on The Grill Team.

Mark Geyer:

When you’ve got kids who drive cars, you know that once they get in that car, they’re no longer under your control.  So you want to make sure that they have every opportunity to drive it as best as they can.

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Mark Geyer: Young people are always in a hurry.  And one of the things we were taught yesterday is that if you’re doing 100 k’s on a freeway, it takes you, once you slam on the brakes on, it takes you another 40 metres to stop.

Matty Johns: We’ve all been in cars with someone when you get a sixth sense that this just is not right, we’re out of control.

***

Matty Johns: One of the people why young people, in particular young men have these terrible accidents is not just testosterone and peer group pressure – it is because they’re naïve.

Mark Geyer: I think this should be a government incentive, the government should make some kind of these courses available to all kids, not just kids who can afford it.

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The police also shared some of their most horrific stories and advice for drivers who would like to be more safe on the road, and why driver fatalities are generally young men.