This is not meant to sound heartless. The emotions surrounding the latest shocking spate of P-plate deaths are obviously still raw. And as the families and friends of those who have died work through their grief, it is understandable that they will sometimes lash out and look for external forces to blame as they deal with their loss.
But if kids are going to keep killing themselves at this rate - and kill or injure other people as a result of their reckless or incompetent driving - the time has come to stop molly-coddling these young people and their deluded friends.
The time has also come to stop offering the parents of reckless P-plate drivers nothing other than uncritical sympathy, as in many cases they too have played a role in allowing their children to behave in a way which endangered them and other people.
I suspect that many people are now heartily sick of these ritualised displays of public grief where we see groups of kids standing around a telegraph pole heaving under the weight of flowers and photographs, and asking aloud: how could this have happened?
The answer is obvious. Dead obvious.
This happened because your friend didn’t know how to drive. Or drove too fast. Got really drunk and drove. Was so distracted by having four friends in the car that he was more interested in impressing them than paying attention to the road.
It takes a special kind of genius to kill yourself in a car these days. Unless you’ve got an old bomb most cars these days are so safe that you really have to try.
The statistics for P-plate deaths this year are sickening. In NSW alone 19 P-platers drivers have died this year - that’s almost one-third the number killed in 2009, and we are just into February.
Some of the accidents have been incomprehensible in their recklessness. The January crash which claimed five young lives in Mill Park, Victoria, involved a 19-year old P-plate driver doing an estimated 140kmh, and with a blood alcohol reading of 0.19 when the legal limit is zero.
Only yesterday police confirmed that a 21-year-old P-plater who died in Waverley, NSW, early Monday morning had been seen chucking burnouts in a carpark just hours before he flipped the car and killed himself.
And while witnesses have said that speed was not a factor in the weekend’s crash in Colyton, NSW, which claimed the lives of three youngsters, the driver had four passengers jammed into his car in violation of the new restrictions on passenger numbers for P-platers in NSW. It was 3am. One of the kids in the car was just 15.
The Colyton crash had the added horrible angle of the twin sisters of one of the dead boys learning of his death via Facebook. It was their 20th birthday and they were checking messages on the social media site only to find that their friends had written “RIP” on their brother’s page.
It’s hard to imagine a more harrowing way to learn of a loved one’s death. The family’s reaction is understandable. But the broader debate, in which readers have attacked the police for insensitivity, is absurd. The police simply were not in a position to confirm this young man’s death because they had not been able to identify his body. Social media isn’t subject to any of the rigours which the police have to satisfy in making such a grave announcement.
It’s an insult for anyone to attack the police over this, especially given the fact they it’s young officers who work through the night dealing first-hand with the carnage so often wrought by P-plate drivers.
And as always the reaction to all of these deaths has included the empty “why?” question from other kids, standing around telegraph poles which there’s every chance they too will one day be wrapped around as they fail to learn from the death of their friend.
Speaking as we were of Facebook, if you want to see a powerful example of the youthful conviction that death is something that happens to other people, type the words “Victoria P-Plate Rules SUCK” into Google.
It will lead you to a Facebook site which at the latest count has 5903 fans, and is devoted to the mindless denunciation of the restrictions on passenger numbers proposed by the Victorian Government.
Given that this is the mindset the community is up against, it’s frustrating that governments are still only talking about implementing much more graphic and direct student education about road safety, and that defensive driving education is not a mandatory part of getting your P-plates.
Ultimately though there is only so much that governments can do or should be expected to do.
Parents have more power than anyone to keep their kids safe, or safer.
It is hard to see what’s going on in the heads of parents whose kids turn up with their first car decorated with the entire accessory section from Super Cheap Autos. Letting your kid pimp their car is basically an invitation for them to use it not as a vehicle for getting from A to B, but a vehicle for showing off.
Then there’s the more fundamental question of letting your kid get a car at all.
For every year you can convince your child to delay getting their licence, the greater the chances are that they’ll avoid any rattiness on the roads.
Getting a licence should involve a serious conversation between parents and kids. It should almost be like applying for a job, with a set of criteria based around need, rather than a rite of passage based around some juvenile sense of freedom.
The first question shouldn’t be do you want a car, but do you need a car. Most teenagers have their local public transport timetables memorised; few of them have jobs which absolutely require a vehicle.
At a time in your life when you want to go out late, get drunk, impress chicks, do stupid stuff with your friends - all of which you can accomplish handsomely without a vehicle - throwing a car into the mix is a recipe for disaster. It’s also hard-wired into our brains as a perfectly normal part of growing up. If we are that wedded to the concept we should stop wasting our energy by wondering aloud why another kid is dead, for it will keep happening once every two or three days, and we should not be surprised at all.
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