How can reckless teenage driving be prevented?

This.

The life path was written for these lads from the moment they were born.

This is a massive societal issue, all the laws in the world won’t make a difference. Poverty, shit parenting, no future prospects, support services cut to the bone and this is the result. It is NO excuse, my sympathies lie firmly with the innocent families and police officers involved.

Is the benefits system to blame? Partly I suppose, but I imagine most of these families are making cash in hand on top of the benefits, usually by being involved in crime. Take the benefits away and they’ll still continue making their dodgy cash on the side. Care leavers and young people from this walk of life are prime pickings for drug dealers - “easy” money to be made without having to find a real job, a sense of belonging to a gang and feeling protected by those they surround themselves with.

Sure start centres, free school meals, family support services with eyes on the child, education welfare officers using everything in their power to get these kids in school, and court for the parents if they don’t. Investment in communities, job and training opportunities, more police on the beat, proper sentencing and rehabilitation opportunities in prison instead of being released to return to the same lifestyle. I’m sure there’s more that would help break the cycle, but none of it will happen.

I’ve worked in schools in this area and my Dad is from there.
Whats lacking is a lack of aspiration. There’s no incentive to work hard and do well, also there are no jobs. All the industry has been closed now and what’s left is being dismantled by the government’s clueless green policies. 50 years you could get a job at 16, work your way up, make a nice life for yourself. Now you can work hard and barely afford to pay your bills.
Why work etc when you can have handfuls of cash from dealing/stealing.

By primary their parents are telling them they don’t have to do what they are told and school isn’t fun/engaging anyway. More prison places are a band aid.

Enforcement Vs personal responsibility.? These are/were career villains. Their choice was made.

True, enforcement is key. Thing is, if we want proper enforcement and probation services, we all have to be prepared to pay for it. Nobody likes tax hikes but we can't complain if we don't get the services we want but also don't want to pay.

How will that be enforced? They don't give a shit.

@6ate9- I don’t disagree with your points, but we also have to recognise that society enables these views. Just look at how the largest SUVs are marketed showcasing how powerful they are & how they allegedly increase one’s attractiveness & provide unrivalled freedom. Yet in reality, the bonnet height is very poor re pedestrian safety, they are too wide for parking spaces & so heavy that the Institute of Structural Engineers issued a warning that older car parks may not be able to cope with the weight. A more responsible society would have cracked down on the bonnet height & made it clear that if you want to drive an excessively large vehicle you will have to pay for 2 parking spaces / park it with the coaches etc.

Speed cameras are another example - they are usually there for a good reason (previous problems with dangerous driving) & easy to avoid most/all of the time (stick to the limit) yet those caught by them see themselves as victims & it is all the council’s fault for treating them as a “cash cow”.

In any other context society would give exceedingly short shrift to this type of grievance.

Penalty points and a social media/internet ban for parents would focus minds. These parents might not know where their child is, or care, but they might think twice if threatened with losing TikTok or Instagram.

They aren’t “accidents” though - the correct term is collision. An accident suggests that what happened was unavoidable yet many road collisions are avoidable.

I just quickly scanned the crime section of my local newspaper after reading your post & spotted reports of 4 collisions where there was clear guilt or a clear suspicion of guilt from the driver & only 1 that looked it might be driver error (although this might be disproved on investigation). That’s just one small area & it’s on a day when the newspaper is reporting a lot about the A66 rather than local news. The 2 collisions yesterday in Warwick & Anglesey were clear examples of dangerous driving too.

This is why the Reporting Guidelines were set up to counteract the impression that collisions are unavoidable. They are worth a read.

https://road-collision-reporting-guidelines.uk/

And I agree with those saying tougher laws don’t create a safer environment.

We have laws.

These lads were already breaking them. Many for years prior to this.

The problem stems from not getting them quick enough when they go down this path positively rather than laws that tell them not to do it.

The utter tradegy in circumstances like this are the victims are never just the guilty.

We need to do more to prevent and protect the victims as much as stopping the perpetrators.

Apologies for reading that wrongly before - I'm very glad that that figure does include many people who weren't killed and will recover from their injuries.

I'm not saying that it isn't a good message to underpin when the opportunity arises - I'm just not convinced that actually officially making a huge thing about it, and giving specific details about safe driving, would do much good for most kids at that age - and may risk putting ideas into the heads of a reckless few from lawless backgrounds.

By way of (sort of) analogy, it's very valuable to tell kids that there are lots of nasty things online and that they should use the internet carefully, with supervision, and ask an adult if they have any concerns; but I wouldn't be giving them a list of URLs and telling them that these are all the sites they should absolutely never visit.

Parenting and discipline enforced from a young age.

The lack of investment in families and youth has been appalling.

NOTHING excuses what these kids have done but we are seeing the fallout of the destruction of surestart centres etc.

Investment in prevention should be greater than cure but investment in cure also needs to be there for when prevention doesn’t work.

as we are discussing the politics behind such incidences - including the lack of police - we have to look at the fallout of austerity and tax etc

None of these recent crashes were people driving legally. Most of the boys killed were too young to hold a licence or had no licence, so tougher laws would have no effect.

I think social media applications should be held accountable for what kind of videos they host on their sites and possibly car technology may be helpful at some point in the future - self driving cars that refuse to exceed the speed limit or drive the wrong way down a motorway even if the self drive is overridden for example. Or possibly refuse to start with an unrecognised driver.

Having said that I do think there a case for not allowing passengers in the car of a new driver for the first year after passing their test. With the possible exemption for drivers over the age of 21 with a full driving license (the same criteria as to accompany a learner) and/or passengers the driver holds parental responsibility for. This would allow people to drive their own children.

Taking away their licence or making it that you have to be 25 to drive or whatever won’t make scrap of difference. Making or changing laws only affects those who follow the law. Look at e-scooters for example. It’s illegal to ride them anywhere other than private land, yet how many will you see today alone?
Banning them from driving will do nothing. In my 35 years of driving I have never once been asked for my licence for any reason other than ID or when I have hired a car. I’ve never been asked by the police. There is nothing stopping someone who is banned from driving a car other than the fear of getting caught. If you don’t stop of the police then it’s not a problem.

@Benvenuto “Society enables this type of attitude though. Speed limits are seen as an inconvenience,”

There are also biological, psychological and cultural reasons.

Driving fast causes a physical surge of adrenaline, higher blood pressure, and a fast heartbeat. Studies also suggest that operating a high-speed vehicle can temporarily increase testosterone levels in men.

Some men view their car as an extension of themselves, using speed as a tool for an ego boost or a way to feel more powerful and masculine.

People with high sensation seeking personalities are naturally drawn to risky and intense experiences, including illegal driving speeds.

100k don't die, thankfully. That's the serious injury statistic. 1800 die. These are all cause figures, so will obviously include reckless driving. You could argue that every accident involves someone's carelessness or recklessness.
I understand you don't see my suggestion as a useful one but in a society where cars are such an central part of life, and great care needs taking around them to avoid danger, I think there's an argument for making this part of education in an age appropriate way from early years.
You're obviously free to disagree.

These drivers don't care about the law, cloned plates, speeding, insurance, driving licences. They have/want a car and will drive it however they see fit until caught (rinse and repeat) or killed. MN debating how to stop it isn't going to stop it. These were men by the way not boys and they were in the gangsta life from day 1.

I think you may have misunderstood my point: I'm not suggesting that faulty boilers or wrong tax codes are huge killers; they are things that are simply not on a child's radar.

You don't need an organised curriculum to tell children that people shouldn't drive too fast and should take care when doing so. What more can you do that's going to lodge in their minds - for years - and will persuade those who otherwise would be wanting to drive recklessly to remember back to what their old teacher said and thus not do so?

100K people dying in car accidents each year is indeed a horrifically huge number; but the clue is in the word 'accident', surely? Unfortunately, the weight of cars and the speeds that they (legally, routinely) travel at is likely to make death as a result of driving misadventure far more likely than death from most other kinds of accident.

How many people die each year as a result of people like the lads in Teesside deliberately driving in such a way where they know death is guaranteed, or at least extremely likely?

Society enables this type of attitude though. Speed limits are seen as an inconvenience, drivers are pitied for the “frustration” of having to sit in traffic jams, wait at traffic lights, having to put up with cyclists, pedestrians etc. Even if you hurt someone with your car, it’s not treated the same other violent crime & many are shielded from any impact on their lives. Ant McPartlin being one of the most famous examples of this.

Yesterday, there were 2 further collisions - on in Warwickshire & 1 in Anglesey. I’m fairly sure that I heard on reporter describe on of them as an “accident” - that’s a really basic error of reporting language as it’s already ascribing a lack of guilt to the perpetrator & it is exactly the type of language that the reporting guidelines are meant to tackle. Reporting & public debate on road safety is slack - a good example of this is all the fuss Iain Duncan Smith created about cyclists (who cause a really tiny percentage of collisions), while the daily occurrence of people being injured / killed by motorists is overlooked. Replacing some of the lazy Westminster gossip style stories on the news with a daily round up of road collisions & some of the footage shown on the Police Interceptor type shows would be a start.

It will be really difficult tackling cases like this, but there are a lot of things that can be done to reduce collision rates. They might not have an impact on extreme cases like this, but they would reduce the overall rate of collisions & lead to fewer people dying or being injured.

100k people in the UK are seriously injured in car accidents per year. 1800 die. About 15 people per year die due to faulty boilers. As far as I'm aware, failing to check a tax code has yet to result in a fatality.
People are sufficiently concerned about death by dangerous driving that here we are on a thread about it. if we were on a thread about preventing
death through vigilant monitoring of HMRC, then I may have suggested tax safety be taught in schools. Hope that clears that one up!
Children travel in cars from birth. They play with them and take interest in them from toddlerhood. Educating them about safety in an age appropriate way isn't suddenly going to reveal to them something they previously didn't know existed, is it?

It’s like fly tipping. Put in all the laws and rules and fines you want. But only those who respect the rules will follow them. Someone who doesn’t care well doesn’t care.

A criminal doesn’t care if they are supposed to have a drivers licence or insurance anymore than the person dumping rubbish cares if it makes your street look messy.

OPs question was How can reckless teenage driving be prevented?

I don’t think they can. Diogo Jota was an example. Here was a man who had a successful career and married with 3 children. He was 28 years old, but he got behind a wheel of a car and acted recklessly, which sadly killed him and his brother.

Men especially, get behind a wheel of a car and enjoy the thrill of going too fast. It excites their brain and releases chemicals which makes them happy. It gives them a false sense of control.

I was working at Heathrow at 19. Early shifts started at 5am. Lates finished at 1am. Later sometimes if the last flight was delayed and we had permission for a night movement. How would I have got to/from work?

Are you for fucking real