I told you we hadn’t heard the last of this one. It’s going to run, and run… and then run some more. Especially with driving instructors like this opening their mouths.
In spite of almost every organisation welcoming the changes at least in part (though the AA’s spokesman and president is so far removed from reality his views are highly misleading), this driving instructor from Wigan is against it.
But Pat Caulwell, of Gidlow Motoring School, said the recommendations would be punishing the majority of young drivers because of the irresponsible actions of the few.
As I’ve pointed out many times, driving instructors are not usually the sweetest grapes on the bunch, and consequently Mr Caulwell appears incapable of 
understanding the concept of risk. Every single driver is a risk. Every single new driver is a bigger risk, and every single young new driver is a huge risk. The accident statistics prove it, and it’s why insurance premiums are higher for young new drivers.
Risk is a probability, not a certainty. If you look at something like a coin toss, where the probability (or risk) of a head or tail is 50:50, then this would equate to a young driver having the same risk of an accident as an experienced one. However, although they only make up 12% of the driving population, they account for 25% of all road deaths and serious accidents – just imagine how many they’d account for if they made up 50% of the driving population! If you compare that to a coin toss, you’re going to be coming up with tails a lot more than heads..
People like Caulwell need to get a grip and face up to the reality that young drivers are a huge risk. Even if the majority manage not to have accidents, they still could. A significant minority do – and since we’re talking about fatalities here, there is much more at stake than a paltry 5 minutes of fame in an obscure rag for someone who doesn’t understand what he’s talking about.
One in five young drivers have an accident of some sort within the first six months of passing their test. Carrying three passengers triples the underlying accident risk. With these fact staring you in the face, airtime should not given to people like Caulwell, who clearly haven’t got a clue. And to hell with namby-pamby nonsense like “working shifts” and “looking for a job”. No one should be allowed to endanger someone else’s life just so they can “work shifts”. When I was younger, I went through several periods of not being able to run a car, but I still got to work whenever I needed to.
A licence is a privilege, not a right. A car is a luxury, not a necessity.