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 didn't drive for about 7 years after I passed my test, because I just couldn't afford to run a car. So I took a refresher lesson and a motorway lesson. On the motorway lesson, we came back on A-roads, because as the instructor said, they are more dangerous- higher risk from on-coming vehicles on your side of the road, roads joining with poor visibility, higher chance of animals running out (especially in the New Forest,) things like that.

Re point 3 - because that’s literally insane?

If we waited longer we'd just have a lot of inexperienced slightly older drivers.

Where I live there are restrictions around what new drivers can do, such as driving at night. I think they are largely ignored tbh past the very early stages. They can get a note from their employer to drive at night to work for example but most don't bother, it is too much faff.

I do think that a lot of kids get a licence but not enough practice after that because of lack of cars or especially insurance costs, and that is a problem.

I also think that city driving has become more and more complex and it's a problem for all drivers, but especially inexperienced ones. I'm an experienced city driver, I grew up in te city near me and am there at least once a week. With population growth, adding new bike infrastructure, bus lanes, and more, it's become really complex. Many differernt kinds of intersections, turns, lights, signs, people coming from many directions at once, etc. There are now parts of the city I avoid altogether, and I can't imagine them as a brand new driver.

At my parents' house, to get out of the lane, I now have to cross a double sized pedestrian pavement, a bike lane, and a lane of parked cars, as well as a cement barrier with little metal pylons which seem designed to mess with depth perception, in order to get into the road. A road with frequent busses. And recently freaking electric scooters and bikes which come up really fast, sometimes not in the bike lane. (I am sure one of them is going to get smoked eventually, I know pedestrians are already being hit by them.)

However - I don't think pushing things later is helpful. It will reduce accidents because fewer people will be driving, but that's not a real reduction.

For whatever reason boys aged 17-24 are the most likely to be involved in car accidents. Other countries take measures to reduce this..

None of those cases would have been affected by the no passenger rule. I agree it may be too difficult to implement curfews. But I for one am
sick of hearing about groups of teenage boys dying in car accidents…

Maybe parents should step up and teach their sons the importance of being responsible drivers?

This all sounds good. This is what we should be enforcing here.

This.

I passed when 17 and one accident in almost 50 years. It’s the individual - don’t tar all 17 years with the same brush!

I’m sure most parents do that! Would you say that to a parent who’d lost a son in a car accident?

You can drive at 16 years old over here on the Isle of Man.

Once you pass your test (P&T), you must display a front-and-back 'R' plate for a full year and not exceed 50mph during this time.

When I was younger many of us started learning at 15 yrs old on farms and back roads, and unfortunately I lost many school friends and acquaintances to bike and car crashes. I was nearly killed myself in one, aged just 15 (driver aged 18, hadn't even been drinking and wasn't speeding). The crashes were always at night in the darkness on poorly lit roads.

There are sensible proposals afoot for graduated driver licensing, i.e. restricting younger drivers carrying younger passengers, but the arguments mooted against that include the importance of car-pooling arrangements (eg for sixth-form college, and jobs) on an island that has issues with its bus service, traffic and parking issues in its towns, and big seasonal hospitality and farming industries that need young workers to be able to get to them.

Thank you!
I said 16 for girls because I know I would have been ready then (in fact I drove at 14 - off-road that is!), and my bffs would have been, but I do realise that lots of girls wouldn't be.
But maybe that's where the stringent testing would come in.

Why?

Work finishes after public transport has stopped so there is an extra expense if you finish late, why should employers not pay towards you getting home? It is I believe a licensing requirement in some areas for pubs and clubs.

YABU

The dead teens were in the highlands where driving is essential.

Part of the issue is stupidly high legal speed limits on roads built for horses and carts or moving herds of animals to and from pastures.

My DCs all learned to drive in their sophomore year of high school in the US, so aged 15 going on 16. They got their licenses once they turned 16. These licenses were provisional to age 21, and could be revoked for any moving violations - speeding offences, illegal turns, drink driving, reckless driving. If revoked, a young person would have to sign up for a learner's permit, retake the written exam, and retake a driving test at age 21. So if a teen had their license revoked at age 17, the next chance they would have to get a DL would be four years from then. There were also stringent regs around the number of teens allowed in a vehicle (iirc it was 2) for drivers aged 16-21. Obviously, many teens get away with violations, but the risk is huge. Speed limits are also sensible in most parts of the US.

Agree, especially wrt the horrific crash rate in rural Ireland, with young men whooring around the winding backroads in the wee small hours. All potentially avoidable if driver education was approached sensibly as in the US (I'm in the northern midwest). There are lessons to be learned from different driving conditions in the US - mountain states, rural New England, states where it snows, etc.

Yes, I would put the age for starting to learn up to 18. It's a ton of speeding metal - you get it wrong, you could kill someone. We require people to be adults before doing anything else that needs maturity and responsibility - voting, marrying, having a mortgage, whatever. I don't see why this should be different.

My DCs all learned to drive in their sophomore year of high school in the US, so aged 15 going on 16. They got their licenses once they turned 16. These licenses were provisional to age 21, and could be revoked for any moving violations - speeding offences, illegal turns, drink driving, reckless driving. If revoked, a young person would have to sign up for a learner's permit, retake the written exam, and retake a driving test at age 21. So if a teen had their license revoked at age 17, the next chance they would have to get a DL would be four years from then. There were also stringent regs around the number of teens allowed in a vehicle (iirc it was 2) for drivers aged 16-21. Obviously, many teens get away with violations, but the risk is huge

Now these sorts of restrictions - and then consequences I could really get on board with. Really based in good common sense.

Not punishing, or restricting all the sensible drivers for the sake of the few.

So when is old enough to drive? There’s people of all ages that are terrible drivers but somehow they’ve passed the test and are out on the roads. There has to be some sort of point in time otherwise you’d have to test each individual somehow.

Me too, I lived in NZ at the time & by 7am on the morning of my birthday I was sitting in the car waiting for my Dad to take me out 🤣🤣 10 weeks later I had my full licence in my hot little hand - I restrictions. My Dad & a family friend (ex British driving instructor taught me, never had an official lesson) in 41 years, have driven all around the world. All kinds of vehicles, in all kinds of conditions ... never caused an accident.

parents need to parent & make sure their kids are sensible & calm behind the wheel. Set the limits theirr children need. Not expect those limits to apply to everyone.

I don’t know if this has already been said, but in Sweden people have to take their test in stages over 2 years. They’re tested in all different road conditions including driving in snow and night time etc. I think a similar approach would help. Not necessarily like you’re not allowed to drive at night till you’ve passed that part, because how would anyone enforce it? But maybe, you do each part under test conditions and you can get your insurance reduced or something.

Just because individuals (women) on here have had zero issues doesn’t mean you can ignore the fact the road traffic deaths are the leading cause of death for teenage boys age 17-20. Risk factors are not just inexperience but risk taking and over confidence in their abilities.

It’s a bit anecdotal to say ‘well I was a safe driver at 17 therefore we don’t need to do anything’. Yes a 17 year old girl is probably a safer driver than many boys of the same age.

Why do other countries do better with this?

I’m sure every single parent of boys will drum in to them the need to drive carefully and be sensible. But the fact is the frontal lobes of teenage boys are not sufficiently developed and they can and do act impulsively and take risks.

You would also have to remove from the statistics all those deaths caused by drivers who haven't passed their tests through, to get useable figures for this argument.
The overwhelming number of deaths (and injuries) caused by cars, are caused by people who are not following the rules anyway - people driving whilst banned, people who have not yet taken a test, people driving stolen cars, people driving under the influence of drugs or drink (drink doesn't tend to be the teens).
If people who cause the most carnage on the roads aren't following the laws anyway, then how would it help to make life more difficult for all the people who do follow the laws ?

I mean, that's largely because there aren't a lot of other things causing deaths in boys that age. Something has to be #1.

Because we have a thing called cars and adult responsibility?

My dd is about to turn 18 and passed her driving test 3 months ago. I have been in the car with her several times and feel as safe with her as anyone else, obviously she’s still gaining experience though but can see her gaining in experience and confidence each time we go out.

We’ve drummed it into her since she started learning, the responsibility that comes with driving and potential consequences. She has openly said to anyone she gives lifts to, if they muck around whilst she’s driving they’ll have to get out. She’s in no hurry to take the P plates off her car and make it clear to other road uses she’s a new driver.

For milestones such as motorway driving, driving in the dark etc, she’s been out with an experienced driver before doing it on her own

its perfectly possible to drive safely at that age as it was for us so I don’t think the age should change. However I do think laws could and should be tightened (e.g mandatory black boxes that monitor speed, limits on engine sizes, a time period before carrying passengers etc). There’s plenty that can be done to addresss problems caused by less mature 17 year olds without limiting the more mature from having the same independence we had

Exactly, there really is an issue infantalizing young people.

There should also be limits on the size of engine you can have in the first year after you pass your test if under a certain age. To stop teenagers shoeing off in cars that are too powerful for them. But I don’t know how you’d enforce it.