17 year old boys driving a car-full of mates

[95percentcocoa]

It’s dark and pouring with rain and past 9 pm. My 17 year old son is mad that I don’t want him getting picked up and getting driven around all evening by his 17 year old friend who has just passed his test this week in a car full of their mates.

It just seems like a recipe for disaster to me and would prefer he waits for a few weeks / drives him in daylight etc. He says I’m over anxious and paranoid. AIBU?

Yes I think I wasn’t clear!

Yes this was my point - how do you stop them accepting lifts home from friends?

You have to hope the other parents have also put the fear of God in them and they are sensible. But I don’t know how not to worry? Arrghh so not looking forward to this stage. I hope for a change in law soon.

Difficult. My brother passed at 17 and was a sensible boy. Drove his friends around the first day he passed and he is still here with us 6 years later. I think it really depends on the friend and what he's like as a person.

Driving age needs raising. Present age was introduced when the majority of kids left school at 15 and had been working a couple of years and were generally more mature. The majority are in education well past 18 now. Parents come on here asking if it's OK to leave 15 year olds for an evening!

Absolutely not being unreasonable - last summer locally to me 4 young teen boys car hit a tree - 3 of them died. All 17/18. Heartbreaking.

Raising the driving age to 18 would make far more sense than the suggestion that young drivers should be limited on the age of their passengers.

TBH many 17 yos are price out of driving because of the cost of insurance anyway.

Raising the age is a lot easier than trying to police the number or age of passengers in a young drivers car.

Sadly, both my SIL and a family friend lost their teenage brother in a car accident very shortly after passing their driving test and starting to drive at 17 years old.

As far as I know in Switzerland young drivers are (or at least used to be) limited to driving very low powered cars until their twenties.

The boys killed near Bedale in the last year or so were in a high powered car, which made it feel less of a tragic accident and more like murder to locals.
Maybe only allowing young drivers to insure small slow cars would lower the number of these awful accidents. Introducing a blanket “no insurance available” until a later age would surely be easy to implement.

It certainly could. A lovely young man I know was in a friend's car with two others when the friend clipped a grass verge and rolled it. The poor guy now has brain damage and will probably never be able to work or live independently.

I drive past where it happened sometimes and it makes me feel so sad, and angry.

At no point during driving lessons do kids get to practice with 3 or 4 other adults (or teens) in the car, maybe being loud, leaning and lurching about, generally winding each other up. The sort of car they’re likely to be driving will handle completely differently with two or three adults in the back and they just don’t understand what effect it has on their ability to brake without losing control. They all think they’re invincible, until they’re not.

Blimey, not only was this teenager bought an Alfa Oreo, his father actually took speeding points for him. When you have parents that stupid, the law need to be looked at.

Judge criticises parents after teenager jailed for fatal crash in Alfa Romeo

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f0972020-204e-4fe4-8176-d5690eeaa7b0?shareToken=349501809703525143324d9605fabe2d

As well as stupid, the parents must be rich enough not to care what they spend. Alfa Romeo for a teenager, and then the insurance? Insurance can be thousands just for a bog-standard car.

And why the hell were so many of these dead teens not wearing seatbelts? Showing off, I guess.

Obviously my post was about an Alpha Romeo and not an Alpha Oreo. But I agree that these particular parent's lack of sense and disregard for rules is dreadful.

‘You saying no makes him look sad’

This is a very immature response (well, the whole thing is actually) are you a parent? We’re there to advise and protect and help them grown into strong, confident adults who won’t just follow the crowd for fear of looking ‘a bit sad’…..

This is not just a ‘crossing the road’ situation, look at the stats (or just turn on the news). She probably can’t physically stop him at 17, but she can and should warn him.

Seems like you treat your 17 year old son like a baby to be honest.

I never let my older two have any but family passengers for the first year after passing even though they were sensible.

My daughters' private school have the same rules.

This is why my 17 year old is getting a van. It will help him in his apprenticeship and he can only have one passenger! It's a lot cheaper on insurance too. He wasn't best pleased at first but now he's seen sense.

I live rurally and roads are surrounded by deep drains and dykes. The amount of roadside memorials to young lads is awful.

Not unreasonable. For many reasons I dont even want to share here.

@phlebasconsidered interesting, the fact the insurance is cheaper demonstrates it's a good idea all in all, must be lower risk. Ironic given how some van drivers drive 😂

Yes, about van insurance. My DC was involved in an awful accident with a group of cyclists. Insurance costs rose extortionately but transport necessary for work. Purchasing a van helped.

I think you are being sensible! My children were only allowed one friend in the car when they first passed their test, driver will be so easily distracted by their friends who at that age are highly likely to be messing around

This is what I've been thinking while reading this thread, you can have as many rules as you like but at 18 there's very little you can do to stop them getting in someone else's car. You can tell them all the horror stories and hope they listen but 18 year olds aren't known for their perfect decision making unfortunately.

Think there are moves to ban new drivers under a certain age from carrying passengers for the first 12m after they pass there test. I’d like to see that, frankly, but I get the impression the discussion over this has been going on for years.

I’ve never let my children travel in a car with anyone 18/under with less than a year’s driving experience, but I’m a super cautious and overly anxious mum!

Why would a 17-year-old want to go out for a drive in the dark and the rain unless he thinks there will be some exciting stuff thrown in, e.g. high speeds, handbrake turns, perhaps everyone getting a chance to take the wheel?