Bring Back the Man With the Red Flag – Not Jezza, Cars

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From the BBC
New drivers could be banned from travelling at night as part of plans to improve road safety in England.

Ministers are considering a graduated licence system to restrict novice drivers, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced.

The move comes as figures suggest one in five drivers are involved in a crash within a year of passing their test.

Who are these Eeyores in government? I’m not against sensible safety law, but at a certain point, you’re focussing too much on the negative rather than the positive.
Even if we ignore libertarian ideals, that people should be free to take risks, what are the odds of someone dying or suffering major harm in a car crash? Because that’s what we’re really concerned with. One in 5 drivers has a crash is irrelevant. Everyone in my family has had at least one crash and they walked away without even a scratch (the cars, not so much). And you balance that against the freedoms and opportunities that the thing brings you.
They have previously been rejected in Britain over concerns they would restrict young people from accessing education and employment.
They really are a bunch of joyless sods in government, aren’t they? What about restricting young people from going to the movies, their mates to a gig? I doubt that the lads sitting in the Matalan car park on a Friday night in their Vauxhall Novas care much about either of those things. It’s about the social freedom, and it comes at roughly the same time as other freedoms as an adult like choosing where and when we go, and who we exchange bodily fluids with.
None of us in the 1980s would have given up our cars for the risks, and in hindsight, none of us think we were taking excessive risks by driving. And the death rate is around 1/3rd what it was then.
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Matt Ryan
Matt Ryan
5 years ago

Too many prodnoses with too much free time. Purge the lot.

Q46
Q46
5 years ago

‘New drivers could be banned from travelling at night as part of plans to improve road safety in England.’

Until they have more experience of night time driving… Oh.

Jonathan Harston
Jonathan Harston
5 years ago

For 24 years I was only licenced to drive a moped. Then I passed an exam and became licensed to drive up to 3.5 tonnes of metal. If I choose to train for, sit and pass another exam I can drive up to 7 tonnes of metal. And so on and so on. No problem with graduated licences for graduated “size” of license. But based on experience and exams, not on age. (My brother passed before 1990, so went straight to 7 tonnes)