To not let 15 year old drive my children around?

[Shabooboogaloo]

Just back from half term with family in USA.
Where they live 15 year olds can drive (!) due to crap local transport.
15 year old DN has been driving to school, around town etc for 6+ months and was apparently excited to get to take my kids (10 and 12) out in the car to the local coffee place a few miles away. On their own.

Now - if they were walking I would have let the 3 get on with it, go out together but there was NO WAY I was letting them go out in a SUV in a city on their own.

Had a quiet word with the mom to that effect. Everyone thought I was the ultimate buzzkill and a bit insulting to the 15 year old. my offer to go with them was shot down. The trip didn’t happen.

YABU - fun police! It would have been fine and the 15 year old would have been able to handle it sensibly.

YANBU - 15 is too young to be responsible for young passengers, too young to be in the roads alone in fact.

A third of teenage deaths in the US are motor accidents. That was enough for me.

Well that greatly simplifies the entire car insurance industry, well done! Flat rates all round. All that money they waste on profiling and assessing risks, you'd think they'd have noticed.

https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/young-drivers-set-to-be-banned-from-giving-friends-lift/

Also little children can be very distracting and can’t judge when the driver needs to concentrate.

Maybe for a while until she gets better don’t let her drive them until she been learning for about 5 months . (Soz not a pro on teens only have one younger teen)

I believe that includes teenagers dying as passengers of cars being driven by all ages.

Don’t forget they have guns and hunting etc for kids in a lot of states too - driving a car isn’t seen as a big deal.

That isn’t very reassuring!

No, I suppose not! But they do have a very different outlook on things sometimes

In the country I grew up in the legal driving age was 15 (historically it was for country kids to be able to get around) and there was reason why the 15-21 age group had shocking statistics for road accidents and fatalities. Get a group of teens in the car, some/all start showing off, acting like idiots, distracting the driver or the driver is the one acting like an idiot, taking risks, add in a lack of maturity and common sense = accidents.

I would not have allowed my DC in that car either.

I told the mom I thought her 15 year old was sensible and probably a very good driver. True. But it’s all the other drivers I don’t trust! Nor do I trust a 15 year old to be able to handle an emergency of any kind while being responsible for 2 kids. I don’t tell her that bit as Inalready heard about all the classroom hours the teen had put into a theory driving course.

Teenagers are predisposed to take more risks, so I'd be concerned about their ability to judge when to pull into traffic etc. I'm sure I've read somewhere about brain development and how even teenagers are more at risk from being hit by a car whilst walking, because their sense of speed and distance isn't fully developed yet. So I certainly wouldn't want a 15 year old driving my kids around.

Absolutely NO CHANCE I’d have let my kids in that car. You did the right thing!

How are teenagers supposed to get to their hunting spot while transporting their guns if they don’t have a drivers license?

Oh wow no I wouldn’t have allowed this either op. Yanbu at all.

I would not have liked this .I think also if she was on her own with friend OK but not with younger children to look after

No school buses? That is unusual.

Insurance isn’t mandatory in all states.

When I was that age we can drive in NZ at 15 too. It’s nothing odd. Very likely 15yos drive other secondary aged kids to school too. We did. You just aren’t used to it.

Though in NZ we couldn’t driver other kids until we had our license for over a year.

Only 2 states and both have a 16 yo requirement for a restricted license

The idea of a 15 year old driving is quite startling.. if it was a couple miles down a quiet road I would have gone with them the first time and the I MIGHT have let them go if it seemed easy and her competent.

I’m surprised she’s allowed to carry peers never mind kids on a provisional license though. I think it would be provisional at 15?

In my country, you can't immediately go to a full licence. Basically, this means, a young driver may not be out driving after 10 pm and they are not allowed passengers unless the passenger has a full licence. I think the passenger with the full licence must also be sober. There is a zero alcohol tolerance for restricted drivers.

In a study analysed by NHTSA, teenage drivers were 2 1/2 times more likely to engage in risky behaviours with one teenage passenger compared to when driving alone. The likelihood of teenage drivers engaging in one or more risky behaviours when traveling with multiple passengers increased to three times compared to when driving alone. Research shows that the risk of a fatal crash goes up in direct relation to the number of teenagers in the car.

I appreciate your children aren't teenagers yet but they are not far off. Other than in a dire emergency, and I'm thinking of fleeing under gunfire here, there is no way that I would let my children be driven by a 15 year old driver.

Yeah it called our obsession with "injury" claims and cheap little cars. DS is only 10 but we already saving up insurance for something more American style, as to be frank if he crashes I want it to be a phone call of him going mam I'm okay but I've crashed your car, not a phone call off the hospital to say he's been injured.

OP it would depend on the kid and car involved decent SUV and a confident mature kid I would let them go. I would trust some of the 15 years we know over the 18 years olds that can drive.

It was definitely 16 where I lived (you can have provisional before 16) and no passengers other than parents/siblings for the first year

Road deaths in the states more common than they are in the UK.

I passed my first driving test in the USA - it was 7 minutes long, I’d had two lessons. Looking back, I learned to drive once I’d passed.

Now in the UK and familiar with this system - there is no way I was safe to myself or to other people in the year after I passed my us test.

I wouldn’t be keen on letting my 10 and 12 year old go out with a 17 year old over here to be honest.