What is the right age to start driving a car? The deaths of four teenagers in a horrific high-speed crash on a suburban street has revived the debate in New Zealand where 15-year-olds can legally take the wheel.
It is one of the lowest minimum driving ages in the world, introduced 80 years ago when licensing began to ensure that youngsters living on farms could drive to and from work in the countryside where there was little or no public transport available.
The late night crash in the North Island city of Hastings, which killed four youths and seriously injured two others when their turbo-charged car smashed into a tree overtaking another vehicle at an estimated 122km an hour, has fired calls for the age to be lifted.
Most teenagers remain in education and can use school bus services well beyond the age of 15 now. A drift to the cities has resulted in one in seven New Zealanders living in rural areas, compared with one in two in 1925.
But farming leaders oppose any change and politicians, sensitive to public opinion ahead of next month’s general election, are divided on calls to lift the age to 16 or 17 as in Britain, where legislators are reported to be considering raising it to 18 in line with Germany and many other European countries.
Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven favours 16 but Prime Minister Helen Clark has said many city parents were more worried about their youngsters’ safety while waiting for unreliable public transport at railway stations and bus stops than when driving the family car.
In practice, New Zealand’s system of graduated licences means most teenagers cannot legally drive on their own until they reach 17 years. But the law is often ignored by so-called ”boy racers” who challenge each other to races on city streets in cheap, souped-up second-hand Japanese imports.
”There are a lot of 15-year-old and 16-year-old ‘supermen’ out there who think they’re invulnerable,” says Andy Foster, of Wellington, president of the local authority traffic institute.
Latest figures show 15 to 19-year-olds account for eight percent of all licence holders, but are responsible for 12% of fatal crashes and 14% of all accidents causing injuries.
The debate on the driving age has flared amid national discussion whether the minimum age to buy and drink alcohol, reduced to 18 in 1999, should be restored to 20 in the wake of evidence of widespread abuse by teenagers.
Although police said there was no alcohol in the bloodstream of the 17-year-old who was driving the crashed car in Hastings, schoolfriends placed mementoes of beer bottles and bourbon among the flowers.
The four who died and the two survivors were all aged between 14 and 17, too young to drink legally, and cans of alcohol were found in the wreckage. – Sapa-DPA