How can reckless teenage driving be prevented?

[UncleColm]

We had that terrible crash recently in the UK which resulted in 7 deaths - RIP to the two Police Officers who were on duty.

In Ireland we had a very similar crash the previous week where five boys died - aged 15 to 17. All were wearing balaclavas at the time of the crash and were 'well known' to Guards. The family they crashed into were three sisters and a seven year old son of one of the sisters (on the way to the airport go to a family wedding) - they are all still in hospital and are very seriously injured.

The previous week, in Ireland, a car carrying eight teenage boys aged from as young as 13 crashed into a car being driven in the correct direction by one young man who is now seriously injured.

The boys seem to be from a mix of poor areas and Travellers. In death they are being celebrated by their families but where were these families when they were alive? Who lets their teenage boy out all night? And let's them produce tiktoks of their 'exploits'? Parental supervision is clearly not in place.

How can this reckless driving behaviour be stopped?

In Ireland there is a huge shortage of jail spaces and places to detain a child under 18. These kids couldn't care less if the Guards catch them - sure what's another Juvenile Caution to them? One of the boys who died was supposed to stay in his own County but had ignored it. They have no fear of the Guards or the law.

I work in a school and there is a huge amount of help available to Traveller children in particular but they still tend to not engage with any after school activities, don't do homework, don't go on school trips, leave school early, high absence rate, etc.

I read recently that, in Ireland, 50% of Travellers don't live beyond 39. In 2026 this a shocking statistic. I don't know what the statistics are for the poor, disadvantaged areas but I do know that the taxpayers provide Social Housing, child benefit, medical cards, free education, free school books and hot lunches, back to school allowances and a whole other host of allowances. There are many initiatives available to help people to stay in education and gain independence.

What more can be done? Is there any way of reaching these young males?

I'd say no. Not until they've had a year of driving. They can't drive their family before they pass the test so no different.

Lord only knows what their motivation is.

I’ve seen so many posts (damn my FB algorithm) of friend and relatives of the dead calling the 2 police officers murderers. That this wouldn’t happen if they didn’t make chase.

I fear that they actually believe it too. Which in itself is concerning.

People actually seem to think a world where we don’t intercept drivers or people on e bikes and scooters is the desire.

Terrifyinh.

More laws restricting driving won't work. Had these boys been prepared to obey laws they wouldn't have been driving stolen cars above the speed limit and in the wrong direction and failing to stop for the police.
We need to make stealing cars more difficult, thumb print recognition to start them, any tampering causing engine lock down. Perhaps even requirements on car owners to keep their vehicle secure.
I'd also put motoring skills and road safety on the national curriculum.

Same as mine currently.

Its crazy. The chase was called off. But there shouldn’t have been a chase because they shouldn’t have been out hunting another gang in a stolen car on dodgy plates full stop.

Never the crims faults though. Always innocent poor babies these chaps.

Hands up to the mum of the other crash who at her own son’s funeral apologised to the victims. The only parent who seems to be able to realise she’s hurt and so are others innocently.

I'd also put motoring skills and road safety on the national curriculum.

But these are more likely to be persistent absentees, none attenders or excluded from school.

Not for their whole school life. The lessons could start age appropriately in primary school.

Bikeability is on the school curriculum, which includes road safety.

Unfortunately, where I live DC need their own bike to take part, which means inevitably there is a greater uptake in more affluent neighbourhoods. I think other councils provide bikes for the sessions, which is a much fairer & better way of doing things.

I would really like to see Bikeability training become compulsory for anyone with a driving ban. Partly, it’s practical in helping people to adjust to life with a car. It’s also a more practical way to engage with road safety than a course. But there’s also the hope that as you encounter so much poor driving as cyclist (not from all drivers as many are lovely, but enough) that it might give people an insight into why what they have done has been so dangerous that they have ended up with a ban.

That's a really good idea.

Agreed.

The solution is don't raise your kids to be feral little dickheads but unfortunately, absolute twat parents and their offspring seem to be growing exponentially 🙈

• Raise the driving age to 21 (obviously this would be very complex)
• Tougher sentences on driving offences. All death by dangerous driving, dangerous driving, driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol to be given custodial sentences. No suspended sentences.
• More police patrols/presence.
• All new drivers to have a “black box” by law.
• Any driver caught using their mobile phone to film/take pictures from behind the wheel - automatic 6 month ban.
• All new drivers to complete an in-person dangerous driving course before being able to take a driving test.
• More speed cameras. Higher fines for speeding.
• Police/council to have the authority to clamp cars that belong to drivers who have driving bans/convictions.

Lifetime driving bans for the kids. Jail / big fine for the parents.

Requirements to owners to keep their vehicle secure
That’s right, blame the honest victim as usual. Here are keyless cars, and it’s your fault if they get stolen, should have used a Faraday pouch, innit.

So many of the replies are “tougher roolz for young drivers”. As I said earlier, these idiots were not even thinking about rules. What good is a “lifetime ban” to someone of the Boris Johnson school of “roolz are for foolz”? What we need is actual enforcement of the existing laws.

I think people proposing ‘losing their license forever’ don’t realise they don’t give a shit. To all NORMAL people if we got caught and banned we wouldn’t drive again. They just don’t think like that 🤷‍♀️

there’s half a million uninsured twats on the road, some of them with over 50 points on their licence

With this kind of kid, talking to them about driving would quite likely give them ideas to go and try it out. And to the normal well-behaved kids, they'd just be perplexed as they'd know that driving is something that only adults (or very nearly adults) can even start learning to do, so why would you be teaching them about it - any more than you would teach them at that age about arranging a boiler service or checking your tax code?

Yes, I agree - people just cannot put themselves in the frame of mind as the career criminals have. It's a bit like when you have a power cut and the first thing that most of us do is to try to switch the light on - because it's just so alien to us not having electricity instantly available.

It's also the equivalent of the supermarket self-service checkouts that scream at you, beep and demand that the assistant verify something, every time they think you might possibly be trying to cheat them; whilst the determined shoplifters just fill up their massive hold-alls and walk out unchallenged, going nowhere near the tills at all.

• Make everyone wait until 25 until they can get a licence.
• No-one is allowed out of the house unsupervised until they are 20.

(Not serious suggestions) But even then they would still do it.

You can't prevent it, you have laws regulating driving and appropriate fining and sentencing and appropriate funding and resourcing for the police and justice system to be able to enforce it.

And in any event, the above events were a organised crime problem rather than teenagers "joyriding".

Are you for fucking real

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.