School Leavers Need Driving Licences
Illawarra Mercury
Tuesday December 7, 2004
ALL of us are saddened by the number of young people being killed in motor accidents.
More stringent regulations are needed to ensure new drivers, young and old, are competent enough to have either a provisional or a full licence.Some of the suggestions being put forward have merit. These include stopping inexperienced people from driving powerful cars, limiting the number of passengers in vehicles driven by young drivers and investigating the use of speed governors on cars driven by P-platers.The suggestion to increase the age for holding a P-plate licence from 17 to 18 years, however, is discriminatory and nonsensical.Your readers might be aware that 17-year-olds are eligible to fly aeroplanes solo after being appropriately trained and issued with a pilots licence. Is there any evidence of 17-year-old pilots crashing aeroplanes around the country?Driving is mostly about mobility and the ability of a young person to look for or to hold down a job.When public transport is deficient or nonexistent, 17-year-old school leavers need a driver's licence to get them to and from their place of work or further education.This especially applies to apprentices, shift workers or people working in the building industry whose next day's work can be at any remote location.What evidence exists to support a claim that a person who reaches 18 years of age will suddenly attain more commonsense than he or she had at 17 years and 11 months?Significantly, the most tragic motor accident reported in recent times involved a driver who was 20 years of age.Depriving 17-year-olds of eligibility to hold a driver's licence will serve no purpose. It is to be hoped that the NSW Government will reject this suggestion out of hand.The call by Staysafe chairman Paul Gibson for more visible Highway Patrol vehicles on the road as being the best possible deterrent to dangerous and irresponsible behaviour deserves to be listened to and acted on by the Government and all parties involved in road safety considerations.- BOB HARRISON,Albion Park.
© 2004 Illawarra Mercury
