Do People And Cars Have To Die?

I was thinking last night, as I was freezing my exhaust off outside (at my age is it too much to ask for a garage?) about human deaths from car accidents. It is a subject at the forefront of many minds this week, following the tragic death of four teenagers from Hastings on a road I used to travel myself. There's talk about raising the driving age to match that of other countries like UK, where it's 17. New Zealand originally chose 15 because our school leaving age was 15 and rural people said that they need to be able to drive then, because if they leave school they can't take school buses to work. Fair enough, but now the school leaving age has risen to 16, it naturally follows that so should the driving age. Hearing about getting licenses in Australia, they have to have experience in different driving conditions (night, rain etc) before they can get a full license. They're also looking into restricting the number of passengers a driver can take with a restricted type license. Sounds like as well as our early age in NZ, it's also too easy to get a license and the restrictions aren't good enough. There were six people in the car in the Hastings crash. I notice that when my driver has more people in the car, it's harder for him to fully concentrate on the road, so surely that's amplified with youth, inexperience and testosterone.

Testosterone, yes. What laws will never be able to stop is the thrill that speed and showing off to their mates will give the male species. There's always going to be deaths on the road as long as males drive cars and driving is more dangerous than knitting.

I think there will be a level of death that is naturally maintained. If there were no deaths, people wouldn't be careful, and have more accidents. They would keep having accidents until the level of deaths made them scared enough to start being careful. This level must be more than 1 or 2 or even 10-20. So it increases to levels we see today. In the 12 months to the end of April 2005, 444 people were killed on our roads. This is two fewer than the 12 month toll at the end of April 2004. On average, if you don't die, someone else will, to make up the level. So if you die, you are saving someone elses life.