Teenagers in Blackburn may baulk at paying even cheap car insurance premiums - after learning to drive for free.
17 to 19-year-olds who have enrolled in the Kick Start Safe Driving Project, funded by Blackburn Council, will be given 20 free driving lessons (about £440 worth at an instructor's average rate) along with 11 weeks of car safety demonstrations, covering everything from car maintenance to cutting bodies out of crash wreckage.
The scheme sets out to challenge the view that dangerous driving is cool - by teaching young drivers how to handle a car safely and exposing them to the consequences of recklessness at the wheel. In one session, students are made to watch harrowing films of joy-riding crashes; in another, they learn about road tax, and where best to get a cheap car insurance quote.
Hopefully, teenagers who graduate from the scheme will go on to be safe, considerate drivers, whose good driving habits bring cheap car insurance for them and fewer accidents for the rest of us out on the road.