On stupid ideas for young drivers

September 21st, 2010 § 5 comments

BBC

Newly qualified young drivers should be banned from night-time motoring and carrying passengers of a similar age, Cardiff University researchers say.

They said such “graduated driver licensing” for those aged 17-24 could save more than 200 lives and result in 1,700 fewer serious injuries each year.

What an absolute cunt of an idea.

A someone in the article suggests, what about young people that work nights? People are also being encouraged to lift share, but kids at college wouldn’t be allowed to.

Surely it would be better to go along the same lines as has happened with motorcycles and restrict what vehicles new/young drivers can drive. Not that that will help, I gather during the local car of choice for the local joy riders when it was big all those years ago was the Metro. So power is not really the issue.

In a side bar on the BBCs’ story is a comment from a father whose daughter was killed in an accident with an 18 year old driver. Surprisingly, it isn’t about not letting people drive until they’re fortyfive or only letting young drivers loose in pedal cars, well most of the quote at least…

They should abolish the driving test completely.

These children are not being taught how to drive at all, they are being taught how to pass a test.

Instead, there should be a driving log – similar to aircraft – where learners have to log 200 hours with an experienced motorist.

They should drive at night, in the sunshine, in rain, snow, ice, on the motorway – under instruction at all time.

What an excellent idea. At the moment you if you learn through the summer the first time you experience adverse conditions or night driving is going to be on you’re on own. You can’t experience motorway driving whilst you’re a learner, and I’ll bet most people after their test don’t bother to book one more lesson to be taught how to drive on a motorway properly.

What’s needed, and is more practical, is better tuition for new drivers and harder penalties for people that fuck up through recklessness. Everybody, not just the young.

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§ 5 Responses to On stupid ideas for young drivers"

  • The driving log idea is an excellent one.

    When I heard the “ban from night driving” idea this morning, my first thought was, ‘Well, how are people supposed to get any experience of it if they’re not allowed to do it?’

    • Sim-O says:

      It’s like when the CBT was introduced for motorcycles.

      The CBT is a test/course you have to take before you’re allowed on the road. It makes sure you have a minimum amount of control over the bike before you’re let loose on the road. This is not practical for cars, due to the amount of space needed with a car, but to clock up a certain amount of supervised hours in different conditions, now it’s mentioned, seems the obvious way to go.

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  • jungle says:

    Agree entirely – very stupid idea. I was fairly irritated when it was discussed on the radio this morning and the entire argument didn’t even consider the point of view of the needs (or civil liberties!) of the young person involved.

    Some people under 19/20 live in rural areas with no buses, sometimes actually need to go places at night or carry people the same age for reasons other than wild partying **and** don’t have parents conveniently available to drive them places. Difficult as this may be to imagine for a middle class city-dweller, it can happen.

    I can’t even imagine what type of ludicrously intrusive enforcement activity it would involve…

    • Sim-O says:

      It’s just occurred to me, if young people aren’t allowed to drive at night, even with a 9-5 job, they’ll be able to drive to work in the dead of winter* but then have to leave the car there and get the bus home because it’s dark at about 4 O’Clock.

      So even for a job with ‘normal’ hours, it’s really gonna screw people up.

      *As long as the journey doesn’t take longer than half an hour.

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