The Roundtrip Learner Logbook app is an officially endorsed replacement for the NSW paper logbook and it’s now three years old! 🥳
To celebrate we’re sharing insights into how learner drivers in NSW practice.
You can find the first article that explores practice sessions here and the second article on supervisors here. In this next article, we’re focusing on practice diversity to help answer the question, do learners get enough driving practice in the rain?*
Why is diverse practice important?
It’s super important for learner drivers to not just log 120 hours, but to practice in as many different conditions as possible so they’re more prepared for all the different contexts they’ll be driving in unsupervised when they get their provisional licence.
Take the weather with you
One of the trickiest contexts is driving in different types of weather. 92.3% of all trips recorded by verified learner drivers were driven in fine weather.
But what about some of the trickier weather conditions? Are learners getting the chance to practice in these other contexts?
Let’s start with rain.
Do learners practice in the rain?
Of all the learner drivers in our app, 80% have practised in the rain, which is pretty good! On average learner drivers have just under 10 trips where they have driven in the rain.
What about other weather types?
Other than fine and rainy weather, learners can record three other weather conditions: snow, ice and fog. These are often harder to come by and as such, 1.6% of all trips have been in fog, 0.25% in ice, and 0.08% in snow.
Off the beaten track
Okay, onto road types! Driving on different road types is important as it can drastically change how you control the car.
Note with the following stats, a single trip can have multiple road types.
Sealed vs unsealed roads
We looked at all the trips recorded and found that 77% include driving on a sealed road, while only 10% were driven on an unsealed road.
Quiet streets, main roads and multi-laned roads
41% of all trips included a quiet street road type, 72% included main roads and 61% included multi-lane roads.
Bumper-to-bumper
Finally, learner drivers note down the types of traffic they encounter in each practice session.
Traffic type
49% of all trips had some light traffic, 54% of all trips had some moderate traffic and 17% of all trips had some heavy traffic.
Next week join us for our last article in this series where we look at some of Roundtrip records set by learner drivers using our app.
If you’re a learner you can download Roundtrip for iOS here, or sign up to be the first to hear when the Android version is released (we’re in the test phase for it at the moment).
The sample is from verified NSW learner drivers using Roundtrip. Verified refers to users who have an account with Roundtrip, have been successfully recognised as a valid learner driver by TfNSW through the app, and have added at least one trip to their logbook.
* Weather information is determined automatically for each trip using location. Road type and traffic type data are required self-reported data for each trip.