Some of the everyday tragedies repeadedly in the headlines around Australia are those reporting the deaths in ‘accidents’ of P-platers.
For those outside Oz, our system has three levels of driver. In the first two the driver has to display a label appropriate to their level of skill. First is the ‘L’ which covers all drivers who are yet to pass their skills test. The other is the ‘P’ which shows they have passed their skills test and so can drive alone. Both are subject to stringent rules to govern some of their behaviour whilst driving.
Schools, police, and media hit home again and again telling these kids… which is what the majority of them still are… about the dangers associated with controlling a vehicle, and the need to be ever aware and careful. Yet they die.
The latest bunch of kids to die smashed head first into a dump truck having just left their year 12 ‘formal’ (the end of school dance). They were all aged between 17 and 18 and the smash left three of them dead and two fighting for life. Currently there is no explanation about what happened.
I spend a lot of time reading the news online… UK, USA, Canadian etc, but I can’t ever recall having seen anywhere near the numbers of fatalities amongst kids as I do here… and in the US the driving age is lower than here. So why is it happening so often?
Are road conditions so much worse? Are cars less well built? Or is it that driver training is so bad the kids just aren’t prepared for the realities of what happens when cars collide?
I’d have said the latter. I don’t claim to be a perfect driver by any means, but even by my own less than perfect standards the standard of driving here is shockingly bad. In all seriousness I think there is a strong case to be made for increasing dramatically the difficulty level for obtaining the P-plate, and that *all* drivers submit to a full driving test every five years.
The Eclectic Interweb 