Driven to distraction

For once, the Daily Terror actually carries a front-page story I’m inclined to agree with. Should there be some restrictions on P plate drivers and the cars they can drive? Damn straight. I don’t just say that because I’m an old fart either – I’m young enough to remember what a dickhead of a driver I was when I was 17.There were certainly a couple of mishaps I was able to scrape out of more by good luck than my driving skills, like the time I misjudged the speed going into a corner, lost traction at the back of the car and slid across two lanes of traffic on the opposite side on a fairly busy road, before landing in a servo. Amazingly, I missed every other car on the road, and was merely badly shaken up, but it could have been a lot worse.

Some of the suggestions being bandied around for restrictions don’t make a lot of sense, like the ban on driving between 10pm and 6am. This impinges too far on young peoples’ ability to work, socialize, or attend uni part time, and while public transport still sucks majorly in most areas, this just isn’t an option. The aim is to save lives, not punish younger drivers. The restriction on the number of passengers is interesting, and I’m not sure about this one. Certainly having your mates in the car as a teenage male tends to make you drive in a more risky manor, but the trade-off to this would be potentially more people having to drive, and perhaps less likelihood of a single designated driver being responsible for transport home, leading to more drink-driving.

The final point being suggested is a ban on high-powered vehicles, presumably based on specific models, and /or some sort of power-to-weight ratio. This restriction is placed on P-platers for motorcycles, so why not cars? Yes, as a bike rider it kinda sucked at the time having to tool around on a 250, after paying way too much for it due to the high demand. Seeing the larger, more powerful bikes I could have bought for less money was infuriating, but I guess in the end the law was there to protect me from myself. Once I got my big bike,

I quickly found out why I had to spend time on the 250 getting the skills needed to keep myself alive. So I have no problem whatsoever with this idea being carried across to cars. Lets face it, after only a year or two of driving, almost no-one has the skills to handle something like a V8, a boosted WRX, or tragically a Nissan Skyline.

Some arguments that such a proposal is unfair on younger drivers whose families only have high-powered cars. Well, most of those cars are not cheap, and if a decision has to be made to keep your kids safe, not to mention the lives of other road users, then you should make it. It probably wouldn’t hurt too many macho dads (or my mum in her old falcon 500 last of the v8 interceptor days) out there to slow down a bit, too. Others argue that modern cars have newer features and technologies that make them safer. Granted, but it is still possible to get a safe car without the high performance. Take a Mercedes A160 for example. Massive safety, couldn’t pull the skin off cold custard. I’m not saying everyone has to go to that level, but you get the idea.