NSW offers young drivers cash for clunkers

The NSW government is offering young regional drivers $5000 to trade in their old, unsafe cars for newer models.

It’s hoped the new initiative, dubbed the ’Safer Cars for Country Kids’ program, will help reduce the worrying number of young drivers killed in road accidents each year by encouraging them to drive newer, safer vehicles.

Young drivers often inherit older vehicles that lack many of the active safety systems fitted to modern cars, and the statistics are fairly sobering.

According to the NSW Centre for Road Safety, 43 percent of cars driven by young drivers involved in fatal accidents are more than 15 years old.

The same body also reports young drivers account for almost a quarter of total fatalities on NSW roads, despite only making up only about 15 percent of all licence holders.

“We will get old and unsafe cars off our country roads and make it easier for young drivers to get behind the wheel of a safer car,” said NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet at the launch of the new initiative.

“This is extra incentive for kids in the bush to ditch their old cars and upgrade to a more modern vehicle with better safety features.”

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To qualify for the $5000 subsidy, participants will need to be under the age of 25 and drive a car that’s either more than 16 years old and has no safety rating, or is newer but carries a safety rating of one or two stars.

Initially set as a trial only, the program will first be offered to 50 young drivers in selected areas before eventually rolling out to 1000 participants.

“If we want young people to really benefit from this program then we have to get it right, and this trial will provide us feedback on what works and what doesn’t,” said the Minister for Regional Transport and Roads, Sam Farraway.

The program will begin later in 2023 and comes just days after Australia’s peak motoring body, the Australian Automobile Association, called for an urgent response from the government to help reduce the nation’s rising road toll.

Road deaths grew by 7.3 percent nationally in the 12 months to January 31, with 1208 people dying in road-related incidents.

NSW isn’t the first state to offer a buy-back scheme to reduce the number of older cars on ours roads. Victoria introduced an almost identical program in the middle of 2022.