Age and the drivers licence

[Thumper]

When I arrived in NZ five years ago I was blown away that fifteen year old kids could be let loose on the roads and that just six months later while still fifteen could be let loose by themselves on the roads with a restricted. When growing up in South Africa we could take our restricted motorcycle licence at the age of sixteen but needed to be eighteen to get a learners license to drive a car.

As a result of this most school kids ended up riding a motorcycle during the final few years at school and even the first year or two of Uni. I can remember the roads around the high school that I attended being lined with motorcycles varying in capacity between 50cc and 125cc, there were hundreds of them (its much easier for schools to provide parking for motorcycles than it is for cars). The only restriction placed on a restricted/learners licence was capacity (125cc max) and the fact that you couldn’t carry a passenger or ride on a motorway at all.

After being on a motorcycle for two years you could then sit your car learners and I believe that as a result your sensitivity to traffic and other vehicles on the road was heightened as was your technical ability to read a road. Any driver who has spent at least two years on a bike makes for a much better driver when they get behind the wheel of a car and a graduated approach to licensing encourages this. If you didn’t want to ride a bike, you just waited until you were eighteen to get your learners for a car.

Although this system worked really well I can’t see anything similar being attempted in NZ. No Member of Parliament or political party is going to be prepared to make a change to the status quo which is likely to alienate themselves from the next generations of voters. Today’s fifteen year olds are likely to be voting if not in the next election the one after that!

[Disco Dan]

I aggree, it would work better... but for this country to change its ways, the entire beehive would need to be taken out in some freak accident! Then people re-elected who actually have brain cells spare for the job take over!

[Twig]

I aggree, it would work better... but for this country to change its ways, the entire beehive would need to be taken out in some freak accident! Then people re-elected who actually have brain cells spare for the job take over!

So true, well put Disco Dan!!!

I think the way it's done in SA sound great!!! Riding a bike makes you a much more aware driver (personal experience)!!!

[McJim]

I fully agree Thumper - we are on a hiding to nothing in New Zealand as there is a 'laissez faire' attitude to internal combustion engines here. Back in the UK they make it suitably difficult and expensive that you really value your right to drive. Doesn't seem to be a big deal over here and there have been threads before on the unsuitability of 15 year olds to drive potentially lethal machines.

Heigh ho - we'll all just need to ride safe and keep our eyes peeled.

[Motu]

A couple of decades ago there were hundreds of bikes lined up outside Auckland University too,even our present PM used to ride a bike to Uni.The change has to do with Jap import cars making cars cheaper than bikes...when even a moron knows it should be the other way around.Make bikes cheap,make cars expensive and you'll see kids back on bikes like it used to be.

[Twig]

More kids on bikes... Yes!!! I think schools and Unis should set up drag strips so their students can do some drag racing in their lunch breaks instead of sitting around texting each other!!!

[Hellraiser]

YEAH MCJIM FOR PRIME MINISTER

[Ixion]

The other thing that we used to have, was every school had long lines of bike sheds and bike racks (pushbikes). Cos every kid from around 10 or 11 years old, rode a pushie, pretty much everywhere. To school every day , to their mates to wherever kids went ("nowhere", if the response on being quizzed by parents is any guide).

So by the time they got to 15 they had 4 or 5 solid years of road exposure. And road exposure as a vulnerable road user.

And we used to have classes in the Road Code at school, and the cops would come round and check bikes for roadworthiness (and the rules were a LOT tougher then). And give training courses - real ones , with fake roads laid out.

It was unheard of for any kid to have his/her parents drive him/her to school. Y' biked, or walked, a few on horseback, a few on buses - that was for wimps though.

Nowdays, learner drivers don't have those years of road training. And they've never learned to be afraid on the roads.

[NighthawkNZ:Me]

the entire beehive would need to be taken out in some freak accident!

Can be arranged... bwahahaha... resistance is futile

Then people re-elected who actually have brain cells spare for the job take over!

that is an impossible probablity... power corupts and fries your brain cells

[Lou Girardin]

Oh, modern kids get road exposure alright - on fuckin' playstations.
It makes them 100' tall and even more bulletproof. Till they break their stupid heads, that is.

[madandy]

On the subject of the playstation generation...babysat a neighbours 6yr old boy the other night and set up my Logitech wheel & pedal box for him to have a crack at V8 supercars 3 and GT4...he had no idea what to do at all. My mrs says ' ya can't expect a 6 yr old to know how to use a steering wheel' and I thought shit how many kids like me were steering tractors round their mates (or their own) farms and playing on little 50cc dirt bikes etc...
It's too dangerous for little Jimmy to play with dangerous things like that now