Don’t know about France or the United Kingdom, but in Germany people aren’t eligible for a license until they turn 18, and it costs lots of time and money to get one.

Interestingly, Germans drive faster than we do, even on those parts of the Autobahn with a speed limit. But I sense a greater respect for speed and what cars can do over there. (They are also much more interested in the technical aspect of cars, and would never make vehicles like the F-150 or Camry best sellers.)

People take driving more seriously (no yakking on the cell phone, for example), and have a more “mature” view of speed. They aren’t running around squawking that “speed kills,” but they don’t glorify “hooning,” either.

Fast driving is seen as a pleasurable, safe and rapid way to get where you are going, and both cars and drivers are expected to have the capabilities necessary to handle it when on the Autobahn.

Kids are going to drive stupid, no matter what you give them. No “HP” limit or “HP/Weight ratio” is going to fix that. Fewer video games/movies glorifying driving like a retard would be a good start

Our current US system of minimal driver training and testing after which anyone is legally qualified to drive any car is absurd on the face of it. I don’t know if the government can fix that problem, but it sure is nuts.

Our daughter has been driving for a year now in a 1993 Volvo 240 station wagon, one of the all time great first cars. Luckily she loves the car and is by nature a careful driver.

It is true that a bad driver can get in trouble in any car, but the frequency with which such mishaps occur goes up dramatically with high performance vehicles. There are good reasons why insurance rates are dramatically higher for Corvettes than they are for Malibus. The highest cost vehicle to insure in the US …. Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourCar/10CostliestCarsToInsure.aspx

I’m no liar for hire lawyer either, but do you doubt that this will cost mommy and daddy dearly?

These people provided a new 400+hp car to a minor with a suspended DL who then went on to cause 3 fatalities. That’s negligence on their part, and it’s going to cost them, as it should.

It’d be interesting to see how the US stacks up against other nations in this stat…

Have fun at your new residence in a Pennsylvania trailer park, brainless twits.

I’m no lawyer – so I may be mistaken – but I think bankruptcy protects a lot of home value in NY State. Or there’s some other legal animal that prohibits going after assets in cases where insurance dries up…

But, somehow, this kid was the only “idiot” that made the news?

Nah, couldn’t be an agenda at work here, could there?

No.

You can’t legislate stupidity away, no matter how you try, though in many ways legislating against stupidity is “fighting fire with fire.”

–chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org

Amen. You want to make them safer drivers? Forbid them from driving with their friends.

I’m pretty sure there are states that have graduated licensing that doesn’t allow new drivers to have non-adult passengers, and I agree that it’s a great idea.

absent the answer to that question, I think it would help if police looked for truly reckless drivers instead of going after speeders who aren’t driving recklessly. They might actually save a few lives. But they would do better to be driving around themselves on all sorts of roads than waiting in the bushes by the side of the road.

I think kids are genetically programmed differently. I wasn’t in any danger of coming to that sort of end, and my brother’s son was Mr. Cautious (I drove across the country in high school and never exceeded 55, mostly stayed at 50, trying to preserve my Ford Falcon). Some kids would find a way to drive dangerously even in underpowered K cars. (If the Germans, for example, are finding ways to suppress this dangerous behavior, we need to learn from them.) Martin Schwoerer?

amen. the fact is that freedom demands that you can buy whatever you can afford (or whatever your mommy and daddy can afford). also, parents get to raise their kids as much or as little as they want (with very minor restrictions i.e. food, etc.). unfortunately, there’s no way to police responsible buying or proper instilling of wisdom in kids.

in this case, as has been pointed out, the kid was already breaking the law by driving without a valid license . . . more restrictions would be useless.

i just hope things like this make parents more cautious. it’s my responsibility to raise my daughter to be responsible in her decisions so she doesn’t hurt herself or others. for me though, i’m worried about the guys that’ll be driving my daughter around in a decade. how can i trust that their parents have raised them right?

“I’ve never been to Connecticut, but in Saskatchewan your ability to control your vehicle on snow and ice depends on your tires and your driving style/skill. Here, AWD helps some people accelerate faster, but doesn’t help anyone maintain control any better”

Imagine Connecticut to be like the mixed bag of winter storms. Lately it’s been pretty much Icy-snow. I remember years of little ice and alot of snow, and I remember years of only ice.

Simply stated – NO ONE has control on ice unless they have spiked tires. However – depending on how savvy you are behind the wheel of your vehicle, you can get out of a potential accident situation. I’ve been in experiences driving on back roads where I’ll turn my wheel and nothing will happen or I’ll simply spin from the back. However, I find that pressing the gas while turning the wheel in the opposite direction of my slide will keep me more on the road, than let’s say a 2WD Honda Civic. While I am not saying I exhibit superior control in the elements, I am saying that my experience of driving in the crappy weather and my knowledge of how car drives definitely attributes to me being able to say that AWD is a life saver.

The thing you have to watch out for is the people who think AWD/4WD means you can speed in the snow, neglecting to mention that while they can accelerate faster, it’s still going to take them double the time to stop their vehicle.

Ruinedeffigy :
December 6th, 2007 at 5:31 pm

If there was a cap, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to buy this said Subaru (only 165 HP, but it looks “fast”) and you know that if a car looks fast, people would assume it was fast… But I can say, this car has kept me on the road more times than off and the all-wheel drive is a life saver in Connecticut.

I’ve never been to Connecticut, but in Saskatchewan your ability to control your vehicle on snow and ice depends on your tires and your driving style/skill. Here, AWD helps some people accelerate faster, but doesn’t help anyone maintain control any better.

That crash that happened in Bristol/Plainville? was a tragedy – what’s even more of a tragedy is that someone (FOOLISHLY) let a kid who is 17 and had a DUI have a license, AND gave them a nice looking WRX! That was the same child who, if he had a chance, probably would have taken more people out with him… Not just his little sister and her friend.

And right before that, we saw the same situation in Bristol – some idiot driving a WRX on RT 6 decides it’s okay to do 70MPH in a 25 MPH zone that’s KNOWN to be both busy and curvy. Only that time, the kid killed his friends, and almost another car full of people at 11:00 on a school night.

All of these kids are idiots, and all of these parents are idiots for letting their kids have fast cars while they’re still not experienced enough to have driven through a complete set of seasons.

Long story short, it takes two to tango. Not only is it the kid’s fault for driving too fast, but it’s not any help that the parents allowed it. The fact that this kid has a suspended license is the fault of the parents… However, given the situation, the child could have lied and said his friend was driving… And not knowing much about the location, maybe the car was parked in a parking garage? That’s very possible in New York City. Maybe the parents didn’t know the kid was drving… All of this is possible… However, given the nature of the kid for disobeying the rules, perhaps it would have been in their best interest to take his keys away.

I guess some people learn lessons the hard way.

Now, should there somehow be a cap on what kind of car a child should be able to drive? I don’t think so… To do that would be to stereotype the driver… Not all 17 year olds are bad drivers. I own a Subaru Impreza 2.5RS Coupe, I got it when I just turned 18. I don’t race, I don’t speed very often, and if I do, it’s only 70 MPH on the highway. Now I am 20, turning 21 in a few weeks… I’ve had two accidents… One was my fault (hit some black ice, going to fast for the conditions) and the other was because – get this, an uninsured 17 year old rear-ended me in broad daylight.

If there was a cap, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to buy this said Subaru (only 165 HP, but it looks “fast”) and you know that if a car looks fast, people would assume it was fast… But I can say, this car has kept me on the road more times than off and the all-wheel drive is a life saver in Connecticut. So perhaps you have to take the good with the bad, as you do when you get onto the road. You know there’s good and bad drivers… Just hope they don’t make you a new statistic.

When I was a freshman in College I had a friend with a 1987 Mustang GT. After one trip with him and his a$$hole method of driving I never rode in his car again. BTW he did cause serious injuries to a girl and himself driving like a fool!

At the age of 37 I can now look back and smile with understanding as to why my parents would have never allowed me (knowingly) to be a passanger in another 17 year olds “supercar”.

Since more passengers = more distractions, that’s actually not a bad thing, and some graduated licenses restrict the numbers of passengers a probationary driver can carry – usually 1 at the most.

The rallying cry against giving teenagers high powered cars is a knee-jerk reaction, that seems good-intentioned, but misses the point that you don’t need 425 horses to make a car dangerous in the wrong hands.

I’ve had friends, coworkers, bosses, etc. who have tales of reckless teenage abandon behind the wheel of less powerful vehicles.

If it goes against common sense to hand the keys of a 400 hp car over to a teenager, then it should go against common sense to hand the keys of a minivan to them as well.