Thursday 4 October 2012

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy


The Association of British Insurers says drivers aged 17-24 are responsible for a disproportionately high number of crashes, deaths and claims.

Given the astronomic cost of insurance for people in that age group, the only teenagers who can drive are those with rather rich parents, which also means they will in all likelihood have access to their parents' fast, powerful cars and not the underpowered old bangers I drove as a teenager. 

Could it be that the high price of insurance for young people, while not necessarily causing the problem in the first place, is actually contributing to it?

The heady combination of testosterone and a 6 cylinder, 2 litre, turbo-charged car is a dangerous mix. Perhaps a better response would be to limit the size of the engine a youngster can drive, combined with a zero blood alcohol level?

Only the other day I was cut-up at a roundabout as a non-signalling youth driving some hot hatch came roaring and screeching in front of me as I was about to pull out onto the roundabout. His response to my beeping him was to stick two fingers up at me (as did his girlfriend in the passenger seat). Perhaps hitting a lamp-post at 60 MPH might be a salutary lesson for him. The problem is he'll probably kill someone else in the process.


4 comments:

Liz said...

I saw a piece on the BBC News site earlier today suggesting that learning to drive should take a whole year. It took me a whole year, during which I had 44 lessons and took 2 tests but I don't believe for one minute that this made me a better driver. On the contrary, I would argue that the fact it took me so long to get the hang of driving suggests I've never been very good at it.

Chairman Bill said...

Which is why there are so few women fork-lift truck drivers....

Geo. said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wT7zM8XgXQ

the fly in the web said...

I had a souped up Austin A35 (I think). It could beat anything more expensive away from the lights...but performance declined thereafter.
A friend had a Messerschmidt which required a pole to push it away from the wall as it had no reverse.
Confine new drivers to the latter...