It was a little after 9pm, the lights at the crossing had been turned off 10 minutes earlier, and the driver was only exceeding the speed limit by a few kilometres an hour.

Stuart died the next day.

"We don't recognise the consequences of our actions," said Ms Rae, who is now a grief expert in Brisbane. The couple had been teaching English in Poland when the accident occurred. "You can make tiny little mistakes or a few seconds of inattention, and it can have a lifetime impact on your life and people you don't even know."

Ms Rae is urging drivers, particularly younger inexperienced ones, to think about the consequences of their actions on their families and others every time they get behind the wheel. Today is the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.

Researchers in Australia and the United States are now testing what kind of feedback will make young drivers slow down. Statistics show young drivers die at twice the rate of other drivers.

At low speed zones, where pedestrians, children and the elderly are vulnerable, even careful young drivers exceeded the speed limit, a University of NSW study of 100 P-plate drivers found. Those who received verbal feedback reduced their speed by three kilometres an hour, which was enough to cut accidents by as much as 30 per cent.

In an American study, newly-licensed teenage drivers were more likely to stop speeding when their parents received text messages dobbing them in for breaking the limit. Road safety expert Max Donath, who visited Australia last month, said most parents trusted their teenagers "much more than they should".

Newly-licensed drivers may say they don't speed when they do, he said. They may also claim they don't text while driving, but tracking devices found nearly all of them did.

To help teen drivers stay safe, Professor Donath's team from Minnesota's Roadway Safety Institute tested a Teen Driver Support System (TDSS) that was like putting a "virtual parent" in the car.

The smartphone-based system provided real-time, in-vehicle feedback to teens about their risky behaviours. If a teen didn't heed the warnings, his or her parents received a text message saying their son or daughter was speeding.

More than 300 teen drivers were included in the test, with a control group of 100 who didn't receive any feedback at all.

The dashboard device provided visual and auditory warnings to the teen driver about speeding, stop sign violations, upcoming curves, and hooning, which involves braking hard, accelerating suddenly and turning sharply.

Threatening to tell the teen's parents if he or she continued to speed was more powerful than anything else, and many teens reduced their speed before reaching the threshold where parents would be told.

"They clearly responded to the persistent pestering that our smartphone app would generate as they were driving," Professor Donath said.

The Australian research by Oleksandra Krasnova and Ann Williamson at the University of NSW divided 100 young drivers into five groups, one of which didn't receive feedback.

Ms Krasnova, a Phd student, found just one session of feedback after an 11-kilometre drive was enough to make P platers reduce their speed by 3km/h for the next six months.

After each drive, she told each driver what kind of fines they would have incurred had they been caught for the offences she spotted, including the cost, the number of demerit points and the risk of losing their licences. She also advised them on the risk of injury to passengers.

Ms Krasnova was surprised by how many P plate drivers drove too fast in slower zones.

Julie Dao, a 20-year-old from Lidcombe, considers herself a law-abiding driver yet Ms Krasnova told her she had exceeded the speed limit several times at slow zones.

"I don't always notice when I drive five kilometres over the speed limit, but I do notice when I go 10," she told Fairfax.

Kelsi Chow, 21, said she was now thinking more about the consequences and risks to others from her driving.

On a recent road trip to Canberra, Ms Chow said she thought about how her passengers were dependent on her. "Now I think I have friends with me, I need to take care of them."

Russell White, CEO and Founder of the Australian Road Safety Foundation, said more needed to be done to improve education and increase focus on personal responsibility. "What we need to look at is how we can start to develop higher order skills and expand awareness beyond simply knowing the road rules."