This story caught my eye in the Belfast Telegraph. A 22 year old man was killed in a car crash on Sunday in Limavady.
He had only recently passed his driving test.His three teenage passengers sustained only minor injuries.
At the moment, enquiries are still continuing, so it would be wrong to speculate about the cause of this specific incident (and the Police are looking for another car which may have been involved). However, just looking at the basic details – new driver, car full of teenage mates… it’s exactly what the DSA on the mainland has been concerned about.
No one is saying that all new male drivers drive recklessly. But they are nowhere near as skilled as they think they are when they pass, and having three passengers with the same attitude in the car at the same time is bound to result in even greater impaired reaction on the part of the driver in the event of an emergency situation arising.
It really is a classic situation, though. Last year one of my 17-year old pupils passed his test, and was out driving within an hour. Later that afternoon I went round to pick up one of his friends for his lesson. I pulled up outside and the lad who’d passed earlier rolled up a few minutes later in his car with my next pupil and two other passengers from his school. And where had they been? McDonalds. You can set your watch by them, they’re so predictable.
At the moment, it seems that people are trying to dump responsibility for this problem at the feet of the driving instructor.
However, the problem lies with parents and society – not driving instructors. And even then, you have to ask if it is actually possible to change something – the often-unpleasant and surly attitude of the juvenile human male – which no one else has succeeded in changing in all of recorded history.