The accident data indicates that skill has little or nothing to do with anything. That’s why people need to read the research — they need to lose these prejudices that lead to erroneous, inaccurate conclusions.

Accident avoidance should be proactive, not reactive. Instead of believing that they can dance their way out of pending wrecks, people need to chill out behind the wheel so that they don’t put themselves in a position where drastic maneuvers are necessary in the first place. Unfortunately, training tends to instill the hubris that makes people wreck, as they come to believe that training will save them, when they should be proactively avoiding risk.

Street driving and track driving are not the same thing, just as walking down a city sidewalk is not the same thing as running in a track-and-field event. On the street, success is measured by the ability to avoid colliding with others, not by being the fastest, most hip and cool thing on the highway.

I’d be very interested to see those studies. When I read of rollovers in SUV’s, it’s apparent that many of these occurred when someone put the vehicle into a maneuver that it was incapable of doing without rolling over. It took me years to get my wife to understand that simple tire inflation is a primary automotive safety factor.

Having education does not mean that we survive doing stupid things, but there are living veterans of squirrel-suit flying, bunjee jumping, mountain climbing, automobile racing and most of these did not start off at the peak of the activity. It is difficult to imagine that learning the skill will not contribute to one’s ability to avoid and/or survive an accident.

On the point of horsepower available to drivers, I feel I am a reasonably skilled driver with more than 40 years of driving and many hours on a track in a wide variety of vehicles. I also realize that the 300 hp in my 335, and even the 100 hp in my VFR800 makes both vehicles much faster than I am. The primary way that this humility was reached was by experimentation on a race track; it didn’t take very long to understand that I ran out of talent long before the vehicle ran out of its ability to deliver more speed. And, to be honest, I had more fun pushing a 185 hp 325 around a track than I do with the 335, probably because I am much closer to my combination of skill and speed in a car or bike with less power.

As others have said, none of this may have made a real difference to a hormonal teen who was pissed off at dad. Surely there are less extreme cases where having less horsepower would reduce the level of injuries.

As one who started driving cars in a 51 hp Renault, and motorcycles with an 80 cc ride, I’m quite sure that having less power helped me to avoid more than one accident.

OTOH, the majority of the problems we’re facing today are the result of just too many people. Maybe we should eliminate any driver training and safety systems from automobiles. The strong will still survive…

I don;t think a standard drivers license should get you the keys to a 500 hp sports car. But that would mean more agencies and red tape so it’s not going to happen. The small number of cases where a novice wreaks a sports car day one don’t justify the added burden. There are other ways to do it.

Like how about limiting a car’s horsepower or top speed electronically?

I think my 25-yo brother-in-laws car has trouble getting to 70. He lives in a very hilly city (Sao Jose Dos Campos, SP, Brazil) and has a 1.3L late 1960’s or early 1970’s vw beetle. HP = 45…? I’m guessing…

No it hasn’t, quite the opposite in fact. Victoria previously had a power-to-weight based system and have gone away from it to one based on proscribed technologies (V8s, Turbos and Supercharged and ‘Modifieds’) as well as specifically banned vehicles. This has led to serious anomolies which now bans some very safe cars and allows some quite quick ones.

Should government be allowed to create more laws, more regulations, more punitive fines, taxation, useless paperwork, more bureaucracy, more underpaid overworked bureaucrat pencil pushers in government owned cubicles at the DMV …. all just to keep us “safer”.

The answer by now, considering our ridiculous state of government affairs in this country, now that we are all being nannied to death by Big Brother, should a resounding NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I agree that we should use tiered licensing in the US, but that won’t be enough. Kids will be kids no matter what. I know that I myself did some crazy, reckless stunts with my first car. I was young and stupid and thought I was invincible, but the only real reason for that is: I was just never this unlucky.

What does finding the brake pedal have to do with power to weight ratios? What car can’t go 70?

How about this for a law – people who have teens living at home can’t own a Porsche.

Banning all driving also works in the same fashion. Also, you fail to recognize what mutually exclusive means for the second time.

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These cars are optimized for high-speed driving. “High speed driving” is not synonomous with “reckless.”

The kind of driving high performance cars are optimized for and feel best doing are very much reckless on the street.

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You brought them up, I didn’t.

No, you brought up specifically that 16year olds don’t buy performance cars. I notice that you don’t seem to deny that performance vehicles changes driving habits of youths.

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Because laws of this sort should save lives, not just make the professional busybodies and do-gooders feel good because they have “done something” in reaction to a high-profile accident that has little, if any, bearing on the real problem.

To the contrary, it’s beneficial to have laws that are effective at targeting causes of poor behavior without being unnecessarily restrictive of normative behavior. “Driving while young” laws fail in that regard.

Introducing more strawmen as if anyone specifically wants licenses graduated on vehicle type because of the aforementioned anecdote is pretty intellectually dishonest.

All in favor of it since it cant hurt.

On another note I have seen those pictures of the accident, horrible…really really awful stuff

When I was a kid, one of my friends had a hot 67 mustang. His parents were thoughtful enough to install racing grade restraint systems for the driver and passenger. You were reminded every time you strapped in that driving was serious. I don’t know that he ever was involved in an accident. A lap belt, the usual thing in those days, seemed to laugh at the possibilities.

Having said that, I have owned cars that never had belts.

Driver’s Ed classes are a joke. The road test is even worse. I realize that it’s not practical for every city or county in the country to have a dedicated closed test loop that would allow the licensee to demonstrate their ability to perform a panic stop or emergency lane change manuever. However, most road tests performed on city streets are geared towards having the licensee perform low speed, precision manuevers that take a certain amount of skill, but no quick decision making or reflex actions. In most places, if you can effectively parallel park, you can pass the road test. Of course, in most places in this country, one never need parallel park ever again if you don’t want to. I know my wife hasn’t parallel parked since she got her license.

A blanket ban on allowing new drivers to drive some Federal government pinhead’s definition of “high performance personal mobility devices” will be impossible for police officers to enforce in a proactive manner. “I wonder if the person driving that new Camaro is 16 or 21? Also, is that Camaro a V-8 that they would be prohibited to drive if they are under 21 or a V-6 that would be okay for them to drive? Screw it, I’m going to Dunkin’ Donuts!” would be this veteran police officer’s point of view.*

Instead we would be forced to treat these as secondary offenses after making a stop for something else or when reacting after the fact when the kid wrapped the Camaro around a telephone poll, in which case it’s too late.

It’s also just a hop, skip, and a jump from saying “Kids shouldn’t be allowed to drive high performance cars,” to saying “No one should be allowed to drive a high performance car.” This slip becomes especially slippery for Federal government pinheads when the first attempt to prohibit kids from driving these kind of cars fails to reach whatever target reduction in annual automotive carnage by teen drivers that they wanted.

In my career I’ve seen kids wreck everything from Firebird Trans- Ams to Hyundai crapboxes that didn’t have enough power to get out of their own way. As with firearms and all sorts of other potentially dangerous tools, it’s not the inanimate object’s fault. It’s the failure of the operator.

*As a gearhead, I personally could tell a V-6 Camaro from a V-8 Camaro easily. Most of my fellow officers aren’t gearheads.

Mine, however, is the far superior approach that has been proven to work.

agenthex: No I didn’t. You must’ve missed the part where I said they’re much more dangerous in cars optimized for reckless driving. I’m well aware of the speeds plebeian cars are capable of.

These cars are optimized for high-speed driving. “High speed driving” is not synonomous with “reckless.”

agenthex: No they’re being bought by their parents, and by 20 year olds who’ve saved up some cash. What’s the point of this strawman anyway?

You brought them up, I didn’t.

agenthex: Why not? What’s the point of laws anyway?

Because laws of this sort should save lives, not just make the professional busybodies and do-gooders feel good because they have “done something” in reaction to a high-profile accident that has little, if any, bearing on the real problem.

True & true.
I contend that it isn’t that tough to identify the 20 to 30 percent of responsible kids and give them the information/training. Some teens can handle calculus at 17, some can handle firearms, some should be able to handle a driving skills course.

Of course, doing so violates the 11th Commandment of today’s educrats, “Thou Shalt Not Judge”.
Resistance can be fierce.

In the end, this is all just window dressing. The elephant in the living room is joke-grade enforcement of traffic laws. Until the legions of adults who ‘drive’ without licenses or chronicaly fender-bender without sanction are dealt with, any improvement in overall safety will be minimal.

>>>No, the solution is to make it very hard for people with bad judgment to get behind the wheel of a car. These kinds of accidents are not because of skill deficits; they’re judgment deficits.
>>>This would be akin to proposing people go to law school in order to avoid committing crimes.

This last sentence deserves a prize for absolutely superb metaphor.

>>>No, the solution is to make it very hard for people with bad judgment to get behind the wheel of a car. These kinds of accidents are not because of skill deficits; they’re judgment deficits.
>>>This would be akin to proposing people go to law school in order to avoid committing crimes.

This last sentence deserves a prize for absolutely superb metaphor.

IIRC, the Roadrunner’s base motor was a 383CI V8 that was rated at 335 hp.

In my view, I’d say that the Nova SS was the pinnacle of low-buck insanity during the muscle car era.

70MPH can be reached by any car. Some do it faster than others but the fact of the matter is driving illegaly can’t be stopped unless you fit vehicles with devices that prevent cars from being driven illegaly. And even then, these things aren’t fool proof.

I liked Ford’s idea to have special keys for parents to give their children which limit the speed of the car – but even at a reasonable 35 MPH, a crash that busts your head open and kills you…

(http://www.barbecuestopper.com/forum/f10/nicole-catsouras-nikki-lost-control-porsche-hits-toll-booth-gory-pictures-1248/

is still possible.

http://www.barbecuestopper.com/forum/f10/nicole-catsouras-nikki-lost-control-porsche-hits-toll-booth-gory-pictures-1248/

From now on, my S550 isn’t going faster than 55 miles per hour. I don’t need my head exploding.