Diary Of An ADI

Another case of teenage deaths in a car driven by a teenage driver.

There is no suggestion that speed limits were being broken, but going too fast for the conditions is definitely implied – possibly along with juvenile naïvete.

Update: And he (Aaron Simpson) got off with the charge of careless driving. The verdict has the approval of the parents of the deceased teenagers.

I’m in no position to judge, so I won’t. All I will say is that thousands of people drive the same route daily and don’t spin off the road or collide with other vehicles.

Teenagers have somehow got to start accepting – or be forced to accept from their currently ineffectual parents – that speed and bravado are dangerous… even when you’re not technically breaking the law.

This case is just one version of the script which is played out almost daily, and which sends young drivers’ insurance premiums sky-high, as well as wrecking the lives of families and friends.

Young people simply have more accidents because they’re inexperienced drivers who believe  – and are allowed to believe – the exact opposite.

I wrote the other day about Euan Tennant – a learner and student who had only taken 10 lessons, bought a fast sports car, managed to rack up 1,500 miles in “a few weeks”, and who ended up in an accident which killed his girlfriend. The police said that they believed excessive speed was the cause.

I’ve also written somewhere recently about the dubious Scottish justice system – even more dubious than the English one in some cases.

Well, Tennant has been cleared!

This gives an absolutely clear message to anyone else out there with a juvenile mind and inflated sense of masculinity, who feels like buying a pratmobile when they are only just out of nappies.

You should read that most recent article. The words of the dead girl’s family make poignant reading. They can only be congratulated for holding in check the obvious words that any sane person would want to use if they weren’t constrained in some way.

The jury found that the charges of causing death by careless driving and going at excessive speed were not proven.

This is an old post. But it is still absolutely true.

In a long-overdue update – I didn’t follow the story at the time, but it was visited by a search in 2022 – Tennant was unbelievably cleared of causing his girlfriend’s death!

This story from Edinburgh illustrates clearly the absolute Number One reason many young drivers have accidents, which are often fatal.

Euan Tennant was a learner driver. He had taken “around ten” driving lessons, but never passed his test. He then went out and bought a two-litre sports car.

It was a calculated decision on his part to do this. It wasn’t like he forgot to pass his test. That he overlooked it. He knew full well what he was doing.

He had driven around 1,500 miles in the car with his 22-year old girlfriend as his supervising driver (allegedly – we must assume that she had passed her test more than 3 years previously, and that Tennant was always accompanied when he went out). He reckons she’d never told him to slow down in all that time. This version of the story says that Tennant had only owned the car “for a few weeks”, so he did well to rack up 1,500 miles in such a short time – it can take me 2-3 weeks to do that, and I’m a very heavy user!

On this one trip, Tennant lost control on a bend (the old story), Laura Campbell had to be cut from the wreckage and died a few hours later in hospital.

CCTV footage shows a speeding car, which Tennant admitted “could have been him”. He also admits overtaking another car shortly before the accident. He claims he was not speeding on the bend and that there was “something on the road surface” that made him lose control.

Just for the record, if you’re driving at a safe speed on a bend, you do not lose control and have to have your passengers cut out of the mangled wreck – even if the road does have “something on it”.

The police could find nothing on the road surface, and believe that excessive speed was the cause.

Tennant claims to have been doing 40-45mph when he lost control.

The case is ongoing, but the fact that a juvenile mind is prepared to behave in such a juvenile way – with such appalling results – is precisely why young people have accidents. It isn’t their training. It is their attitudes.

Tennant is expressing all sorts of remorse.

The fact is: he made the decision to buy a sports car with sound mind clear conscience, and hopelessly inadequate driving skills knowing he was still a beginner. And now he needs to face the music.

EDIT: And this is why young drivers will continue to have fatal crashes, because there’s no deterrent. Tennant was cleared on the grounds that the case against him was not proven. I take back a lot of what I’ve said about Scottish law making better decisions than the law in England.

I’d just point out that Laura Campbell is still dead. And Tennant was still highly inexperienced, and driving a car hopelessly too fast for his poor driving skills.

Laura’s parents understandably feel “let down” by the verdict.