{"id":11044,"date":"2012-11-26T22:30:50","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T22:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=11044"},"modified":"2012-11-26T22:30:50","modified_gmt":"2012-11-26T22:30:50","slug":"the-stupidest-idea-ever-for-reducing-young-driver-accidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=11044","title":{"rendered":"The Stupidest Idea Ever For Reducing Young Driver Accidents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two stories came through in the feeds today and between them they present absolutely the most stupid and ill-conceived remedy for reducing accidents among young drivers.<\/p>\n

Before I go on, let\u2019s just remind ourselves that young drivers have accidents due to a combination of inexperience per se<\/em> and simple biology. It\u2019s an inalienable fact of life that you can\u2019t become experienced in anything without passing through the realms of inexperience first. It\u2019s also an inalienable fact that the human brain isn\u2019t fully mature until the age of around 25. And there\u2019s bugger all anyone can do about either of those things.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t stop them trying.<\/p>\n

First of all, Fleet Directory reports on statistics I have mentioned several times in the last few months – that although drivers in the age range 17-24 only account for an eighth of all road users, they are involved in a quarter of all serious or fatal accidents. And the solution to this is\u2026 start teaching them to drive cars from the age of 11.<\/p>\n

Yes, you read that right. From the age of eleven!<\/p>\n

In actual fact, it\u2019s yet another carefully orchestrated publicity stunt – this time by SEAT. I reported back in February this year<\/a> of a similar idiotic caper, championed by Quentin Willson, and others have also attempted to gain valuable advertising by pushing off-road lessons for toddlers and getting amateur journos to talk about it.<\/p>\n

Fleet Directory claims that this is the only such scheme in the country – well, unless the story I reported on back in February is the same scheme, they\u2019re completely wrong on that one! So you wonder how wrong they might also be in their gushing support.<\/del><\/p>\n

Naturally, IAM is sticking its oar in and is filling its collective colostomy bag at the idea.<\/p>\n

But as if 11 wasn\u2019t young enough, this story from the Evening Express in Scotland<\/del> reports that Aberdeen Council is looking to build a junior driving facility where they\u2019d take people as young as three!<\/strong> Apparently, the \u201cfacility\u201d would be available to pre-school clubs and primary schools.<\/p>\n

IAM hasn\u2019t latched on to that one yet, but I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll think it\u2019s a spiffing idea.<\/p>\n

What planet are these people on? In just the same way that giving sex education to primary school kids hasn\u2019t cut teenage pregnancy – quite the opposite, having whetted their appetites – giving them driving lessons is fraught with similar problems.<\/p>\n

When I mentioned that original scheme back in February I said that if you give a typical 11-year old the chance to drive a car, he isn\u2019t likely to want to wait another 6 years until he can go for his licence. A 3-year old definitely<\/strong> won\u2019t want to wait 14 years, and having been fed \u201cgrown-up\u201d ideas to a brain that simply isn\u2019t<\/strong> grown-up, he probably won\u2019t<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Cars are for adults. We already have way too many of them on the roads as it is, and this idiotic scheme can only have one eventual outcome – reducing the minimum age for driving, and so artificially increasing the number of drivers out there.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned above, the human brain doesn\u2019t mature until around 25 years (and the modern male is 5 years behind that, anyway). While it is maturing, it needs gentle conditioning. It can\u2019t be slammed into adult-overdrive just because of some bizarre moneymaking publicity event by people who don\u2019t have a clue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two stories came through in the feeds today and between them they present absolutely the most stupid and ill-conceived remedy for reducing accidents among young drivers. Before I go on, let\u2019s just remind ourselves that young drivers have accidents due to a combination of inexperience per se and simple biology. It\u2019s an inalienable fact of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,86,87,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-bad-drivers","category-news","category-training"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}