PERSUADING teenagers that they are not immortal can sometimes be a challenging task for a driving instructor.

The effervescence of youth does not sit well with the restraint and responsible attitude required for safe driving, which is perhaps partly why new drivers have such a bad safety record compared to experienced drivers. I remember becoming painfully aware of this fact while giving advanced driving lessons to an 18-year-old former pupil who had passed his L-test about six months earlier.

We were doing a session on rural driving for which I had chosen a country route he happened to know well; and in driving, familiarity can breed complacency. He was attempting to race around corners as if he was the only road user on earth. No matter how many times I told him to slow down, his right foot just kept getting heavy.

"Right," I announced. "Desperate needs call for desperate measures. You were heading into that bend at nearly 45mph. If I hadn't slowed you down and there was a fallen tree around the corner, what would you have done?"

"An emergency stop, I suppose," he shrugged.

"Okay, let's do an emergency stop at 45mph and see how you get on," I challenged him.

So we found a long, straight, deserted stretch of national speed limit road and he built up his speed to a steady 45.

"Are you sure about thi?" he started to ask, but I didn't let him finish. "STOP!" I said, holding my hand up to the windscreen.

His foot was on the brake in a flash, thanks to his lightening reactions, but he pressed too hard and we went into a straight-line skid. To his credit, he quickly brought the car back under control with cadance braking but our stopping distance was huge.

"FLIPPING HECK!" he said, shocked by the time it took us to stop.

"Quite," I said. "Now imagine doing that while going around a bend. You'd end up in the hedge, or worse, in a coffin."

Sadly, a common fatal accident scenario among young drivers is leaving the road on a bend and then hitting a solid object, such as a tree, with no other vehicles involved. Many of the floral tributes on local roads mark the spot where such accidents have occurred in recent years.

If your car hit a tree at 55mph, typically, the bonnet would crumple and rise, smashing into the windscreen. Your momentum would fling you forward, impaling your chest on the steering column and your legs would be thrown out straight and snap at the knee joint. Then the rear of the car would shoot up in the air, smashing your head into the windscreen and by the time the car fell back to the ground, you would be dead. All that would take about seven tenths of a second. It makes gruesome reading, I know, but sometimes a detailed account of harsh reality is necessary to get live-for-the-moment teenagers to appreciate how thin a line there is between thrill and kill.

Becoming qualified to drive is very empowering for a teenager because it gives them independence and an associated passage to adulthood. Unfortunately, some young people are old enough to pass a driving test, but not mature enough to handle the responsibility of being a motorist. A minority of young drivers find it hard to resist the temptation to test their car's limits and their own driving skills in front of impressionable mates. Others may become over-confident and fail to give driving the full concentration it requires.

Nurturing a responsible attitude in fledgling drivers is the most important part of any driving instructor's job, but it can also be the most difficult. Words are a poor substitute for experience when it comes to changing attitudes and experience only teaches you what you need to know after you needed to know it. Tragically, too many young drivers don't get a second chance their first big mistake is the last thing they ever do.

Audrey Wixon is director of Wycombe Driving School www.wycombedrivingschool.co.uk