Almost every list of tips for new drivers rests on one assumption: that a new driver’s problem is handling the car. The crash investigations say otherwise, and they also say when the risk actually peaks and what is worth practising instead. Two of the rules below are Israeli, worded differently from the ones you are likely to know, and both are easy to break without noticing.
When is a new driver actually at risk?
Not evenly across the licence. A 2003 study by McCartt, Shabanova and Leaf followed newly licensed drivers through their first year and their first 3,500 miles. The crash rate per distance driven peaked over the first 250 miles at 3.2 crashes per 10,000 miles, and had already fallen to 2.0 over the next 250.
Broken down by month, the same study found 2.3 crashes per 10,000 miles in month one, 1.1 in month two, and under 0.5 by month eleven. The same drivers, the same roads, several times the risk at the start.
Mayhew, Simpson and Pak looked at licensing records that year and found the same shape: highest in the first month, falling steeply and consistently through the seventh month, then more gradually through the 24th.
Israel ends its formal new driver status at exactly two years, which is where that curve flattens. The practical consequence runs against instinct: risk drops with kilometres, not with the calendar. Waiting out the period leaves you close to where you started; driving through it deliberately, in varied conditions, is what moves you down the curve.
The failure is in the eyes, not the hands
The US National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey sent investigators to the scene of 5,470 serious crashes. Analysing that sample, Curry and colleagues (Accident Analysis and Prevention, 2011) found driver error to be the cause in 95.6% of them — not the vehicle, not the road.
Which kind of error? Of the errors made by drivers aged 15 to 18:
- 46.3% were recognition errors — inadequate scanning of the scene, distraction. They did not see it in time.
- 40.1% were decision errors — speed wrong for the conditions, following too closely.
- 8% were performance errors — actually losing control of the car.
Eight percent. Practice aimed at operating the car addresses one error in twelve, which is why a new driver can feel competent behind the wheel and still be at high risk.
Israeli data points the same way. In the National Road Safety Authority’s 2025 annual summary, the offences most often identified as the cause of a serious crash were failing to give way to a pedestrian (15%), disobeying a traffic light (13%), lane changing (11%) and failing to keep a gap (10%). All four are failures of looking and deciding. Not one is a failure to operate the vehicle.
Following distance: the law sets a floor, not a safe gap
Israel writes this rule in two parts, and they do not say the same thing. If you learned to drive elsewhere, the second part will be unfamiliar — most countries publish a recommendation here, not a statute.
Regulation 49(a) is the substantive duty: a driver must not follow another vehicle except while keeping a gap that allows the vehicle to be stopped at any time and a collision avoided, taking into account the speed of both vehicles, the state of the road, visibility and the traffic. It carries no number, deliberately — the gap you need changes with speed and conditions.
Regulation 49(b) adds a numeric floor on top: a time gap of at least one second to the vehicle ahead in your lane.
Do the arithmetic. 90 km/h is 25 metres per second, so at that speed the legal floor is a 25-metre gap — and both your reaction time and the whole of your braking distance are supposed to fit inside it. They do not. The floor in 49(b) marks where the offence begins, not where safety begins; the test that binds is the one in 49(a), and it nearly always demands more.
To measure it without instruments, pick a fixed object at the roadside and count from the moment the car ahead passes it until you do. Two seconds is a sensible working minimum on dry tarmac, and you should double it once the road is wet. Worth repeating: failing to keep a gap accounts for 10% of the offences found to have caused a serious crash in Israel.
The phone rule, and why it is worded the way it is
“Switch the phone off” is advice nobody follows. What is binding is worded very precisely in the regulations, and the wording is the part worth knowing.
Regulation 28(a) requires both hands on the wheel while the vehicle is moving. One hand may come off only to do something needed for the proper operation of the vehicle or to comply with the traffic rules.
Regulation 28(b) provides that while the vehicle is in motion the driver must not hold a telephone, must not use one except through a hands-free device, and must not send or read a text message. Note the definition the regulation gives itself: a hands-free device is one that allows the phone to be used without holding it, and if the device is inside the phone, the phone must be placed in the vehicle stably, so that it cannot fall. A phone in your lap or wedged into the tray by the gear selector does not meet that, even on speaker.
Regulation 28A adds that a display visible from the driver’s seat must not be operating while the vehicle is moving, except a display used for the vehicle’s control or navigation. The practical rule follows: enter the destination before you set off, not at a red light.
This connects straight back to the figure above. Distraction sits inside the recognition category — the largest of the three.
When to take extra care, and the hour that will surprise you
In that same annual summary, 459 people were killed in 438 fatal crashes on Israeli roads in 2025, against an average of 384 killed across 2022 to 2024 — roughly 20% higher. The deadliest hours of the day were 15:00 to 16:00 rather than the middle of the night, and the deadliest months were March and July.
None of which makes night driving easy, and the legislature marked it explicitly: a new driver under 24 must have an accompanying driver beside them for the first three months at every hour, and for the three months after that between 21:00 and 06:00. That night window is a statement about which task is harder. The full accompaniment rule, the passenger limit and the sign requirement are set out in our new-driver eligibility guide.
To finish the picture: in 2025, 160 young drivers (up to 24) were involved in fatal crashes, and of the 266 drivers killed on the roads, 61 were young.
The minute before you start a car you have never driven
Everything above assumes you know the car. In a rental you do not, and neither does a driver in the first weeks after passing the test. Three things are worth a minute before you move off.
The head restraint — five seconds almost nobody spends
The IIHS rates head restraints on geometry, and both of its measures can be checked by hand. The top of the restraint should reach at least the centre of gravity of your head — roughly 3.5 inches, or 9 cm, below the crown — and the horizontal gap between the restraint and the back of your head should be as small as possible. A gap beyond about 4 inches, or 10 cm, is associated with a higher rate of neck-injury symptoms in rear impacts. In a car that is not yours, the restraint is almost always set for somebody else’s height.
Mirrors, then the switches
After the seat and the mirrors, find the wipers, the lights, the demister and the hazard switch — before you need any of them. Hunting for the wiper stalk in the first rain is precisely the recognition failure described above, except this time you created it yourself.
Size and gearbox
Our fleet currently runs 117 cars available to book, model years 2013 to 2026, all of them automatic — so there is nothing to adapt to on that front. But a span of years that wide means equipment is not uniform, and you should never assume a particular car carries a particular system. If something matters to you, ask at the branch before you drive, not after.
Driving safely in your first year comes down mostly to where you look, how much room you leave yourself, and how many kilometres you have behind you. The full conditions for renting as a new driver are on our car rental for new drivers page; you can check availability and book online, and branch details and opening hours are on our branches page.
