Every couple of years, the team at FirstCar runs a survey for readers of the DVSA magazines handed out by driving examiners to every candidate on their first test. They ask probing questions about their experiences learning to drive, buying a first car and getting insurance. The insights gathered through this exercise are shared with road safety professionals through the New Driver Insights 2025 report, which you can view and download below.

There are some interesting takeaways this year:

This may be because the average age of those passing is increasing, but we can see that 75% of those who completed the survey said they would be funding their own insurance policy.
Possibly for the same reason, we can see that 33% of respondents have a first car budget in excess of £5,000 which brings an opportunity to purchase newer cars with more active and passive safety features.
When FirstCar ran the survey in 2021, 63% of respondents said they did not want black box insurance. By the end of 2024, this has reduced to 40% showing more acceptance for this technology.
Instagram, YouTube and Facebook were the most popular platforms, followed by Snapchat and TikTok - another sign of the trend towards people passing their test older.
Almost 25% told us that it had taken them over a year to pass the test from the point they began learning. Whilst this is likely an unpopular result of the learner backlog, it likely holds positive benefits for young driver safety, as we know a longer learning period is closely linked to reduced crash risk.