To think 17 is too young to drive

[KimberleyClark]

Three teenage boys (described as mid teens by police have been killed in a crash in the Highlands). I cannot begin to imagine what their parents are going through.

https://news.sky.com/story/three-teenage-boys-killed-in-highlands-car-crash-13421075

My SIL has forbidden my soon to be 17 DN to drive until they are 21. I'm increasingly thinking she is right. She is a paediatrician and not ignorant of teen brain development. AIBU?

I don't think banning 17 year olds from driving is the answer for reasons given above - in plenty of areas not driving is very restrictive. You cannot expect adults to depend on lifts from their parents to get to jobs and college.

Your SIL's approach gets my back up - it's not her place to ban adults from driving. It's controlling.

I would support other restrictions though, particularly driving young passengers and mandatory black box.

Graduated licenses would be good... no passengers under a certain age (unless immediate family), no driving 10pm-6am unless for a work commute or education and similar. But we can't baby teenagers forever, they need space to learn to act safely.

I would actually lower the age to 16 for more rural areas.

Good luck to your SIL with that. Maybe she should forbid her offspring to drink alcohol or have sex while she's about it. She may be 'not ignorant' about brain development, but she clearly does not know much about either young people's psychology or the limits of parental authority.

This.
My DC learned at 17 because we live in a village with no bus service.
We did many hours of practice on country roads and paid for extra motorway driving lessons.
However I had strict rules.
No passengers until they had been driving 6 months.
No taking lifts from friends who were new drivers.

Even so there were issues because other parents were not so strict and didn't want to do the late night lifts.
One friend was given a powerful car. He wrote it off on a bend on a country lane. He and his three passengers all got out unscathed. His parents covered it up, no police were called.
DS2 told me he'd given a lift to a bunch of friends one night. He hadn't had a drink but they had. One girl kept leaning across him and was in danger of causing an accident. After that we went back to doing lifts for nights out.

I don't agree with this. My 18yr old is just about to drop myself and my son (14) off somewhere.

Exactly. How ridiculous.

How can she ban adults from driving? Yabu.

My daughter passed her test at 17 a few months ago, she's now 18.

The things that gave me confidence when she passed are that her Dad and I spent a lot of time sat next to her while she was learning to drive and she also had proper lessons. When she passed her test we both said that we thought she was ready.

She also has a black box in her car which lets her know how well she's doing, she's very keen to keep her points high and hasn't even got a red warning let alone a fine. Her insurance renewal is coming up and we have no plans to remove it.

I think your SIL is batshit TBH, she would be better off treating it with caution and spending time with him learning to drive.

I don’t think it’s age I think it’s a few things including maturity and influence. Most 17 year olds need help getting on the road, nearly all of them have black boxes tracking their driving. I am helping my daughter learn to drive with instructors and I am ensuring she drives in all weather conditions, will do a motorway with us, all types of light and traffic (school runs, peak work time, lunch time, evening, dusk, dark) so she has as much exposure to real life as possible. I know someone who was 26 had one lesson a week on a Saturday morning 9am for a year or two then did a test on a weekday 8am and was shocked by how different the roads were 🤣 I personally think the more exposure you get to real life on the road as a learner the better driver you can become irrelevant of age.

The Highway Code changed a few years ago to allow driving instructors to take learners onto motorways BEFORE they have passed their driving test I believe? This was due to evidence showing a higher incidence of new drivers having high speed accidents on motorways IIRC. However you have to be reasonably close to one for that to be helpful so I'm not sure how often it happens.

Also, as others have said, if you live in a rural area, having access to a car becomes necessary for education and/or employment. If anything, maybe the pre-test requirements should be made stricter like Germany or other places in the EU. IIRC you are expected to cover a minimum number of practical driving hours before the test, AND first aid.

This is exactly what we did. All weather and all times of the day.

The closest stretch of motorway to me is the extremely busy M62. I avoid it whenever I can because some of the most reckless, idiotic driving I've ever seen has been on our stretch of it. There's an accident there virtually every week and the majority involve young male drivers aged 20 - 30 years in mostly high powered cars.
Conversely, I work with a lot of young drivers (18 - 25) of both sexes who have never driven on the M62 - or any other motorway - because they don't have the confidence to do so.

I don't think the issue is age, it's how invisible or capable behind the wheel these younger drivers mistakenly believe themselves to be.

When I passed my driving test, my driving instructor told me the cautionary tale of a young female driver he'd taught who was killed in a car accident whilst speeding along a country road one week after passing her test. She'd lost control of the car and driven into a wall. It frightened me and stayed with me. I've had no accidents in 37 years.

It’s a tragic accident but without more information you can’t assume that the crash happened due to the driver’s age. Road traffic accidents happen daily and plenty of older drivers crash their cars. It could have been a mechanical fault with the car or it could be a dangerous stretch of road or there could have been something unforeseen on the road, water or debris or an animal etc. Of course the driver could have been driving dangerously and under the influence of drink/ drugs, speeding etc but there are plenty of adult drivers who crash due to these circumstances too. You can’t really extrapolate from one tragic accident involving teens that 17-year-olds shouldn’t be driving, if any crash banned people of that demographic from driving then nobody would be on the road.

Instructors do take learners on motorways now. DS had quite a few motorways drives during his two hour lessons.

But then he has you, a supervising adult driver as a passenger, that's not the same as a car load of 17 year olds.

I understand your sister's concerns but she can't stop an adult from learning to drive, that is ridiculously controlling.
A lot of 17yr olds need cars to get to collage and work.
Not everywhere has public transport.

Both our sons passed their tests at 17. They didn’t have many lessons, however we’d take them out most days and they’d drive to college and I’d take the car home, then do the same at the end of the day. It was the exact same way as I learnt to drive when I was 17.

By the time DS1 was 19, he was in the army and had passed his test to drive tracked vehicles too. He was, also, trusted to drive minibuses full of soldiers up and down the country. DS2 needed his car for his community placements when he was doing his nursing degree, too. They’re both safe, competent drivers.

You can’t tar all teenagers with the same brush. The only young person I know who has had a major accident is one of my DDIL’s but it wasn’t her fault. She was sent flying off the A1 in her little car by a drunk HGV driver. It’s left her with PTSD and she’s never driven since. She can hardly get in a car, even.

I got my licence at 15, which was normal in my country then.. who knows? I never had any problems and it did.mean that by the time I was at uni I was a more experienced driver

There's people pass where I live just not long after they turn 17 - they're either very fast learners, the test is easier here, or they drive before they're old enough! I'd suggest a mix of all 3 contribute!

It’s tricky.

I think maybe some sort of rule about multiple young passengers in the first year or so, as others have suggested.

It’s difficult with the way society is set up- 18-year-olds are legal adults.

I’ve also seen threads where users point out brain development isn’t complete in under-25s. But think of all the under-25s who are qualified teachers, paramedics, midwives, nurses, police officers etc etc etc

The article says they were ‘mid teens’ so maybe not even 17. There’s nothing to say they were driving legally or safely. A group of 15 year old boys crashed locally to me a few years ago and the car was stolen. That’s very different to a 17 year old who has taken lessons and passed their test.

DD is 17 and is an extremely safe driver, has a black box in her car and doesn’t carry multiple passengers. Age is one factor but it’s really about the specific driver, their experience, their passengers and the car rather than just their age.

A small inconvenience for a limited amount of time is a tiny price to pay to prevent deaths of young people on the roads.

There have been several horrific incidents in the last year alone where there has been loss of life of 2 or more young people.

Would it not be a small inconvenience for a limited length of time.

Would you feel different if you lost both your DC in one go due to a collision.

I agree a blanket ban would inconvenience some young drivers & that it's young people driving with their mates on board that's the big risk but surely a small price to pay to prevent deaths & destroyed lives.

My 17 year old has just got his provisional and is hoping to start lessons soon 😭
I wish we would go down the same route as Australia where drivers under 25 have limits on passengers, I think 1 passenger under 21 or something like that. These crashes always seem to involve several teens in the car. Poor families.

Well, if you can pass a tractor test at 16, then I suppose that most people are assumed to be more grown-up at 17. We can't exactly put a 25mph speed limit on young drivers, because it would cause chaos!

For those who live rurally, driving at 17 is a godsend, as it means that they can get to college, part-time jobs and friends' houses. I know of farm kids who drive to college in their tractors and pick up a friend in need of a lift on the way (and more so, since they were struggling to book tests due to the Covid backlog). Our nearest train station is 25 minutes away by car, buses are every two hours (if they turn up), and our two nearest taxi ranks consist of one car each (and are expensive). There is no way that you can police every 17-year-old driver for having more than one or two passengers, so it's a difficult one!