I wrote this when the tabloid media first floated the issue:
Thank God for Carl Sculley, finally the knee-jerk laws we need. To long have I driven my siblings to school and car pooled with friends to save money. To long have I been allowed out past 10pm. To long have myself and my friends been able to drive their parents cars.
I live twenty minutes by car from the nearest 'population centre', this law would make it illegal for me to go and see a movie in the evening, indeed to have much of a social life at all. The mere idea of a curfew like this should be abhorrent to a democracy, I am 18, I can vote, I can leave home, I can drink and I can have sex. Society recognises that I am mature enough to make these decisions, yet Carl Sculley believes that I am not mature enough to be able to decide when I can drive. Also were I to have a shift that finished past 10pm I would have no legal way of getting home unless of course a fully qualified driver slept in the car during my shift and could then supervise me on the way home.
A limit of one teenage passenger, now there's a brilliant idea. I drive my siblings to school every day I am able to, because of bus and class timetables this means they get to school only half an hour before school compared to an hour if they were to catch the bus. I drive them home in the afternoon and they get home three quarters of an hour before they would on the bus. This restriction would make it impossible to car pool, a practice which is both more affordable and environmentally friendly (and is encouraged by the RTA). If young adults can't car pool then we will have a situation where you infact have more cars on the road, and if as we are led to believe young drivers are so accident prone then increasing their number can only be a bad thing.
I would be interested to see what the power to weight ratio young drivers would be limited to, either it will be so high as to affect a tiny percentage of vehicles or it will restrict young adults from driving their parents Falcon, Commodore, Lancer, Forrester or almost any other modern vehicle. We simply see the official power figure of many new cars reduced whilst actual power remains the same or increases. A car that is fairly slow in stock configuration may have after-market parks fitted that substantially increase it's power, e.g. a turbocharger or supercharger. Vehicles thus modified are not required to lodge a revised power and power to weight ratio figures (provided that modification does not alter the displacement of the engine beyond a certain point, which neither turbo nor supercharger do) and therefore unless the police are going to put every car they pull over on a dynometer and a set of scales to measure its power to weight then this is unenforceable.
These restrictions will be ignored by drivers who they are aimed at saving, as young drivers who engage is risky behaviour that may result in an accident will not baulk at evading these restrictions. Particularly as evasion is as simple as not displaying their 'P-plates', to successfully stop this the police would have to pull over every driver and check their licence.
Unless Carl Sculley wanted to severely disadvantage young adults exemptions would have to be granted for work, study and siblings. There are several problems with this: an exemption will not necessarily be easily and quickly obtainable, the majority of young adults with a job are casuals and therefore their shifts may vary from week to week meaning that any job entitles a P-plater to be out after 10pm or that they are allowed out only on the days they work and what is to stop a P-plater from keeping an exemption even if they no longer work? For a system of exemptions to work the police would have to pull over all P-platers, making an assumption of guilt, and place an onus on the driver to prove that they are exempt and that their exemption is valid.
This measure is a simple vote grab designed to appeal to two sections of society: those prone to derogatory statements in regard to “the youth of today” and those who can not control their own children to varying degrees or in some cases enough. The statistics used to back these restrictions are themselves misleading, the quoted figures are that 7% of all drivers make up 25% of accidents between 10pm and 2pm. When the accidents per kilometre are examined it can be seen that the accident rate of young adults is only marginally greater than that of the middle aged whilst the over 65's have an accident rate almost triple that of younger drivers.
As a green P-plater, I can make several observations of our system and suggestions for improvements. Our licensing system is to easy, a general knowledge test, a simple on-road test and laughable hazard perception testing,difficulties teens have with these are primarily psychological as they are not difficult. Crucially however our system does not require practise driving in various conditions, training or testing in on-road hazard avoidance. A driver can get their P-plates without having driven in the dark, driven in the rain (I'll admit that weather conditions don't always make this possible) or done an emergency stop.
I believe several reforms are necessary: Speed restrictions on L-plates should be removed (taken to 110km/h like a black/gold license) so that under the instruction of a supervising driver learners may experience motorways and lane changes at motorway speeds. More hours of experience, at least 75 or as many as 100 hours of experience before a P1 on-road test may be attempted. Of these driving at night must make up a certain percentage. A defensive driving course should be mandatory when on L's and/or P's. The P1 on-road test should include an emergency stop. Like in South Australia the location of accidents causing death or injury should be marked by a simple black or red post respectively.
The restrictions proposed are clearly flawed and poorly conceived. They will serve to penalise law abiding drivers, doing little to prevent deaths of risk taking drivers. To be fairly enforced the police would have to pull over every car they see, check their licence and if they are a P-plater ensure they are carrying only one passenger, check power and weight of the vehicle and if past 10pm demand that the driver prove they are exempt from the curfew. Our police force has neither the numbers nor funding to do this. Even if these restrictions were successful in reducing accidents by those aged 17-21 logic dictates that this would be a false reduction as accidents would now increase among 21 year olds. As having turned 21 they are, allowed to drive unaccompanied at night for the first time, allowed to carry more than one passenger at a time for the first time, allowed to drive a powerful car and allowed to drink and then drive. The proposed restrictions will prove to be ineffective, unenforceable and inconvenient, increased levels of driver training however can and will reduce the road toll.
