A story on the newsfeeds, and covered in various places, says that the government is considering banning new drivers from carrying any passengers unless they are family members.
A ban on carrying any passengers is also a possibility.
The proposals are in reply to the Association of British Insurers (ABI), who have previously 
reported on high premiums due to a disproportionate number of accidents involving young drivers. I reported on this back in October this year – at the time, the media had latched on to the minimum of one year to learn aspect.
As I also mentioned in a very recent post (posted, ironically, in response to do-gooder ADIs trying to claim that today’s youth are above reproach), 12.5% (1 in 8) of drivers are young and newly qualified, but they account for 33% of road deaths. Fortunately, someone out there is at least trying to act on the facts and not the baloney.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been on a lesson with a pupil, and we’ve been cut up by a Corsa with 5 males in it, all staring back and grinning like half-witted gargoyles at how clever they’ve all just been.
The report also refers back to the ABI suggestion about a curfew. As I recently noted, young male drivers are already seven times more at risk than all males put together – but this rockets to seventeen times more at risk at night.
The Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) continues to keep completely out of touch with reality by arguing against these suggestions, and yet again blaming it on the training young people receive. IAM seems incapable of understanding that lack of experience can never be bought by the lorry-load and applied overnight – it takes time for normal driving skills to consolidate when a new driver starts driving on their own.
The only way of stopping young, new drivers from killing themselves on rural bends while out with a car full of mates in the dark at midnight is to stop them from being able to have a car full of mates in the dark after midnight in the first place! Any fool ought to be able to see this.
The average 17-year old male these days has a mental age of at least 5 years younger (and often more) – I see this time and again when I drop them off after lessons near to shops or other places where their mates are all waiting with their BMX bikes, shouting and arseing around. Adults don’t generally behave like that – children generally do.
It seems that far too many people – ADIs included – cannot understand that the average 17-year old who kills himself and one or more of his passengers while showing off in the dark (or due to thinking he was a better driver than he was) does not actually sit there and say “today, I am going to behave like a total wanker in my Corsa and kill all my mates”. He does it because he’s an inexperienced 17-year old male with a serious attitude problem.
Inexperience and a bad attitude are the worst combination imaginable. Inexperience becomes experience with time – but the bad attitude is another matter entirely.
Banning them from dangerous situations while their skills and brains mature a little with their new licence makes far more sense than the pointless aim of trying to teach experience in the blink of an eye, which is what IAM keeps prattling on about.
New drivers should not be taught advanced driving techniques by default – and certainly not openly. Christ, they can’t even do the nursery school stuff confidently in many cases (which is why they have the bloody accidents), so teaching them how to do high-speed police chase driving is just asking for trouble when it is going to be their attitude that is the main problem in the first place.
Of course, the chances of anything changing are extremely remote. It’s just more talk.