Knowing me knowing you: Key players and their interactions within the young driver road safety system

Young driver road safety has persisted as a global problem for over 50 years, despite a plethora of interventions. These have emerged from a driver-centric approach, and as such predominantly focus upon “fixing-the-driver”. Therefore, interventions such as education target the young driver, often without addressing that the young driver is just one part of a complex - and much larger - road safety system. An alternative approach with traction in other safety critical, high risk, domains is systems thinking, which recognises there are a multitude of influential actors (e.g., government agencies, community groups) within the broader road safety system that influence young driver safety. As a vital component of an application of systems thinking, this paper presents an analysis of the young driver road safety 'system' (YDRSS) in Queensland, Australia by identifying systems actors, and the actors' perceived system roles in addition to their relationships with other actors. Interviews were held with 82 participants representing 26 actors ('organisations') important in young driver road safety. Synthesis of semi-structured interview transcripts revealed some horizontal integration (interaction amongst organisations in the same level) and limited vertical integration (interaction between organisations in lower and higher levels), including some pertinent unidirectional reported interactions. This suggests that the current YDRSS is less than optimal and reveals potential new avenues for intervention through systems thinking - a unique solution to a complex problem.