I’ve had it with P-platers killing and maiming themselves, their friends, murdering occupants of other vehicles, and permanently ruining the lives of people whose focus of how to optimise your family’s future is shockingly taken away. Are they stupid? How fast do you have to be going to hit a tree and render unrecognisable, a once comfortable 4-door sedan? How many clicks past 100 on their speedo is the marker where brainlessness exceeds responsibility?
You must have good balance for ceiling fan installation work and yet no such basic judgment and coordination is a requisite for a teenager behind the wheel. For the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars required to get a them their provisional license, what good is it doing? Used to be the only requirement was a birth certificate and a copy of the road rules booklet. Then dad, mum, or an older sibling or any licensed driver was cajoled into starting to teach you on the day you turned 16 years and 9 months. There were no Learner Log Books. No demands for a number of hours with a professional instructor. No legality of a hundred and twenty hours practise.
Obviously I didn’t kill myself (or anyone else) and nor did any of my friends. Ostensibly we were less primed than present young drivers, but with three distinct advantages: our licence was a privilege not a right; parents who would kick our arse if we were idiots; and cars that were not expensive and powerful. Now, when parents know their child is a danger on the road by speeding, drink or drug driving, or overloading their car, they just shrug their shoulders with, “I know – but what can you do?” You can take the keys to the car. The incessant death reports are killing me.
