Standardising the standard of the learner driver: Imbree v McNeilly

Abstract

More than twenty years after the High Court of Australia created an exception to the objective standard of care required of the reasonable driver by imposing a reduced standard upon inexperienced, unqualified drivers in respect to their supervising passenger, the High Court has ruled that this anomaly can no longer stand. Long a favourite of torts law examiners, the case of Cook v Cook,2 has recently been overruled in Imbree v McNeilly,3 so that the standard of care now owed by inexperienced drivers to all road users, including their supervising passengers, is one and the same - that of the 'reasonable driver'.