Category - News

As you can imagine, the proposals being considered restricting the carrying of passengers by new drivers has got a few feathers ruffled. Here’s a sample from a forum frequented by the very people the restriction is aimed at.

They better not consider such a stupid proposal………..what if I need to take a passenger who isn’t family, plus who is considered family as mine is extensive or how would they even check

Well, there goes my car sharing plan for uni… it’s a ridiculous idea and unless they have everyone’s family trees or something then I’ll just gain a few extra cousins every time I need to go somewhere

Absolutely retarded. How are they even going to enforce this? Stop every driver who looks under 25 and who is carrying a ‘person that doesn’t seem like their family member’?

What an incredibly stupid idea. Some drivers (of any age) will drive badly whether they have passengers or not… Some may even drive better with passengers. What’s to stop young drivers meeting up in separate cars?

To me, it just seems like another excuse for insurers to not pay out.

My thoughts exactly.. if young drivers were THAT bad then surely it’d be better to just increase the driving age?

I’ve noticed that every time one of these stupid laws is thought up, it’s always the idea of the insurers. They only want these laws so that they have more reasons to not pay out.

You see what I mean about modern youth being so readily prepared to break the Law by lying if it suits them?

It is not an excuse for insurers not to pay out – if you’re insured and driving legally, they will pay. Premiums for young drivers are currently so bloody high because insurers are paying out too much and too often – and ever more frequently paying out to the next of kin while the insured driver (and his or her passengers) lies in a morgue somewhere.

If such a ban were imposed, and you flaunted it – that is, broke the Law – then they wouldn’t pay, and it would serve you right. But a significant number of people would abide by the new law, so there would be a benefit that isn’t there at the moment, and that would lead to lower premiums in the longer term.

None of these people ever stops to consider that young drivers often do have the wrong attitude, and this does lead to accidents, many of which are fatal, which does push premiums up. None of them can accept that the most common accidents involve young males, with passengers, at night, on quiet roads, where distraction and arrogance combined with inexperience are the causal factors. None of them can accept this, in spite of the facts.

And finally, the restriction would only be in place for a period of time during which experience would be gained. Unfortunately, whereas inexperience can be fixed in time, arrogance cannot.

If the Law were changed, it would almost certainly not apply to anyone who passed their test even as recently as today! The only people who should be concerned are those who pass once the Law has changed – and there’s no guarantee it will. It’s all just talk at the moment.

I’ve written before about how badly parents drive around schools when they’re taking their own brats to and from them. Indeed, this chicane system in Nottingham is close to Hollygirt School, and in the mornings and afternoons parents park on both sides, on the yellow lines, on or off the pavements, and even on the chicane area itself if there’s nowhere else to stop. And since the chicane is on a bend, and has “give priority to oncoming traffic” signs at both ends, this makes driving through there extremely difficult and dangerous. And when they want to pull away they just do it.

Well, a Scottish Council is poised to show what must be the most humongous amount of common-sense ever by considering imposing complete bans on driving on certain roads (except for residents) during school run times.

School run maniacs in East Lothian would be forced to park 300m away from the gates.

The proposal has been blamed by the local council on parents desperate to park within feet of the school gates.

This is a story repeated outside thousands off schools across the entire UK every day of the week during term times. A spokesman for the council said:

The behaviours of these drivers, who make dangerous turning and reversing manoeuvres and contribute to congestion, cause difficulties for the majority of pupils and parents who walk or cycle to and from school.

It is totally inappropriate to try and carry out these sort of manoeuvres close to schools where there is a great number of schoolchildren present.

Following representations from the parent councils of the three schools, it was agreed to introduce the experimental traffic regulation order.

The AA warned it would just move the problem elsewhere – totally failing to appreciate that it would move the problem away from the school gates, which is why it is already such a big a deal in the first place.

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.

At the end of August I reported on a non-incident where a learner driver had accidentally damaged a headstone while driving through a cemetery. The local hyenas immediately called for learners to be banned from all cemeteries.

I note from the newsfeeds this latest example of headstone vandalism, where an elderly driver in his mid-70s attempted to manoeuvre his vehicle and ended up flattening someone’s monument. This one happened in Lancashire.

The local hyenas have not yet clamoured for the elderly – who are a far greater risk than learners in these locations – to be banned from cemeteries.  I won’t hold my breath.

(Note the tragedy surrounding Cassie McCord, also discussed previously.)

The petition is now closed. It made 20,002 signatures in the end – an obvious sign that there is something that needs to be done about dangerous elderly drivers.

Unfortunately, it fell short of the 100,000 needed to get it debated in parliament, although by exceeding 10,000 it should get a comment. Ironically, a petition about the West Coast Franchise debacle has nearly 200,000! One about beer duty has over 100,000! Others of ridiculously low significance also have a disproportionate number.

As I’ve said before – and in the words of Kent Brockman – democracy simply doesn’t work.

Fortunately, as this story reveals, Cassie’s Law WILL be passed (sort of).

I saw this story in the newsfeeds. The original story from last year is here.

Cassie McCord was 16, and a student in Colchester. In February last year, she was hit – as she walked on the pavement – by an 87-year old driver. She died from her injuries later.

The driver, Colin Horsfall, had already been warned by police to stop driving after he went into the EXIT of a garage and ran into trees.

He failed an on-the-spot eye check during this particular incident, but refused to surrender his licence. Police have no powers to ban people immediately. Unbelievably, this happened just three days before he killed Cassie, so she’d obviously still have been alive today if Horsfall had been forcibly removed from the roads.

A verdict of unlawful killing was returned. Horsfall was injured in the incident and died  – apparently from his injuries – several months later. This was recorded as accidental death. So, as well as deliberately continuing to drive when he was clearly completely incapable of doing so safely, he was also never brought to task over Cassie’s death.

Cassie’s mother, Jackie, has set up an e-petition asking that police be given the power to temporarily suspend drivers in such circumstances. It has the backing of the police, who also suggest that they should be allowed to confiscate vehicles as well. I fully agree. People like Colin Horsfall are absolute menaces. Horsfall was by no means unique.

You can view the petition and sign it here (or click the image). I urge everyone to do so – getting these types of dangerous drivers off the roads permanently is one of the best things the government could do.

EDIT: Note this story, too. An elderly driver killed an innocent motorist as a result of being unfit to drive through age .

And note this story where another elderly driver also got on the wrong side of the road and collided with two other cars.

And this one, where an elderly driver with defective eyesight injured a cyclist.