STORM2K

Power ban for P-platers

By SIMON BENSON State Political Reporter

December 14, 2004

SOME P-plate drivers will be told what cars they can and can't drive - and be barred from high-powered vehicles - as the first stage of the State Government's solution to the youth carnage on NSW roads.

Those that have also had prior accidents or incurred demerit points and are deemed a risk will also be limited to how many passengers they can carry at certain times of the day.

These are the measures that The Daily Telegraph understands the NSW Roads Minister Carl Scully is finalising as a national P-plate forum prepares to meet tomorrow and are the preferred measures from 11 options already considered by the State Government.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government intends to trial an aggressive driver training program as part of its response to the young driver crisis.

The NSW Government's scheme -- which will ban P-platers from certain cars -- will tackle issues such as exemptions and what to do about high-powered cars already owned by young drivers.

The two new measures of power limits and passenger restrictions on drivers who have come to the attention of authorities, already raised as options to deal with rising youth carnage on the roads, have received support from P-plate forums and motoring groups over the past two weeks.

The Saving Lives on Our Roads Forum in Canberra tomorrow is at the instigation of Mr Scully and Federal Transport Minister John Anderson.

And since Mr Scully released the P-plate discussion paper late last month, more than 1000 submissions had been received.

Mr Scully yesterday would not confirm the development in his plan to cut the youth road toll but did say he had now ruled out curfews as an option.

"We have received more than 1000 submissions on the Young Driver discussion paper," he said. "I'm still considering the range of responses received on the 11 options to determine which, if any, could be announced before the end of the year.

"I will not introduce measures that do not have broad community support, that are impractical to administer and that are difficult to enforce.

It is clear, however, from the initial responses that a curfew does not enjoy any significant level of community support and I will not be proceeding with it."

While the overall road toll in NSW is 18 lower than for the same time last year, young P-plate drivers are over-represented as a driving group and the number of deaths and injuries are rising.

Since August, a spate of deaths and a campaign by The Daily Telegraph has prompted Mr Scully to act swiftly to try and arrest the toll.

Last month he said he was sympathetic to restricting young drivers from having access to high-powered cars.

The other options which have been canvassed and could still be incorporated into a longer-term plan include:

* TOUGHER driving tests and longer learner and provisional licences

* DOUBLING the mandatory period of supervised driving for learner drivers from 50 hours to 100 hours;

* DOUBLING the minimum time spent on L-plates to 12 months, and increasing the provisional licence age to 18;

* IMPROVING the driving ability road test (from Ls to Ps) with more emphasis placed on hazard perception and safe driving practices; and

* MODIFING the demerit point system for provisional drivers.

Drivers under 26 make up just 15 per cent of licensed drivers, but are involved in 36 per cent of the fatal accidents.

On average, a P-plate driver dies in NSW every six days, while another 17 are involved in crashes each day.

Our terminology is different, but we also have a problem with young drivers having a disproportionate number of the serious accidents.

When my daughter first got her license through college, she drove a small station wagon (NOT an SUV)--and it was much cheaper to insure than many other models of car. It went fast enough to be a "safe" car (to maintain highway speeds, put on burst to avoid a problem, etc.), but it was not the type of car to tempt into seeing how fast it would go, etc.

But I was amazed at the number of her contemporaries whose parents bought their kids sports cars, muscle cars, etc. as graduation presents, etc. What could they have been thinking? Everyone wanted to ride in those cars, and the question of "will it really go that fast?" always came up...

While my daughter did give some of her friends rides, this was basic transportation--not joy riding. A ride in a "station wagon" (estate wagon for British, I believe) was not a novel experience for any of them...

As for the time spent on "learner plates," that is interesting. Here the actual time required behind the wheel before getting a license is very low. We actually did see that my daughter got about a year of experience behind the wheel with one of us as "instructor" and we did lots of teaching that the official instructor did not (snow, ice, sand, wet leaves, etc.--and we taught her on a standard shift) but we had to go to a lot of trouble to do this and most was done on private property. The dilemma is that once a person has a license, they have a license so parents have a lot less control--the best time to teach is before they get that license. Also, we insisted on a basic mechanics course so that she had some clue about her car before she got it!

Restricting the time or number of passengers poses interesting problems. I think many here fight those restrictions because there may be good reasons for the number of passengers or even for the time of day on the road. My daughter was a skater, and her assigned ice time was often at pretty odd hours. In her case these were very early morning rather than very late at night--but would have fallen into "forbidden" time zones. Also, I can see that when my oldest grandchildren get their license, they will be able to help my daughter with "chauffeur duty" for the younger children--but restrictions on the number of passengers would almost certainly be a problem because there are 5 children. So if the oldest is to drive to music lessons, for example, there would still be 4 passengers...

No easy answers to these debates because the laws tend to punish the good along with the bad, and the responsible along with the irresponsible.

I'm actually aware of some of the problems that go along with "young" drivers even now because my daughter is very small, looks young and is constantly getting stopped by the police. Her 10 year old is now physically slightly bigger than she is. As you can imagine, this is a total nuisance as she gets pulled over relatively frequently so that the police can check that a child is not driving... I've been with her a bunch of times when this has happened... If it weren't so annoying, it would be funny.