New York regional media are reporting a terrible tragedy from late last night. A car was speeding on the highway when it struck the guard rail and subsequently flipped over (drivers frequently react to hitting the guard rail by jerking the wheel in the opposite direction; creating the flip). Two passengers were killed and the other three are critically injured. And the entire accident was the avoidable result of several very bad decisions. The car was a Dodge Charger SRT8. With 425 horsepower and rear-wheel drive, it's hardly suited for high-speed driving in bad weather. Its owner, the driver, is a 17-year old kid with a junior license (he shouldn't have been driving the car at all under NYC law at that time of night). What's worse, the junior license was suspended. It's unclear whether the Charger SRT8 had popular summer tires. Side airbags are optional on the SRT8, though they'd have done nothing to prevent the roof from collapsing. The wrong car for the wrong person in the wrong weather. Should anything be done?
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A few questions: Did the driver die? How many people were in the car (5 or 6)? How many of them were wearing seatbelts? And was it ‘his’ car, or did his parents co-sign the loan or purchase it for him?
The driver has not died, but is in critical condition. 5 total in the car. No idea about seatbelts. According to the articles, mom gave it to him as a present for starting college.
Tough call; after all, at his age, I was equally dangerous behind the wheel of a 96-hp Dodge Aries.
The fact that his junior license was suspended and that he shouldn’t have been driving after sunset tell me his bad decision making would still occur, whether he was piloting that Dodge Charger or a Toyota Corolla.
To be honest, driving a vehicle at high speed in poor weather is bound to end in tragedy, no matter what he was driving.
I think a better idea would be to limit what mommy and daddy buy their kids. Not many teenagers can afford these powerful cars on their own, and the ones that can usually have enough brains to not mess up a good thing. Seems like just another case of parents with more money than sense.
Sadly I think both the parents and obviously the kids made bad decisions.
Lets hope someone leards from this:
Don’t buy your kid a car he/she can’t handle.
Don’t let your kid drive on a suspended license. Don’t let your kids ride in cars like that when driven by a 17 year old with a suspended license.
No, we should not restrict teen drivers access to high-powered cars.
I’m sorry for the families’ losses, to be sure, but restricting things won’t help.
If we’re looking for ways to make drivers safer, how about we implement a driver-training program in the US that matches those in most of Europe? You know, one which actually teaches people to drive properly and only issues licenses when driving skill is demonstrated. Driver training in the US is a joke. Limiting what kind of cars new drivers are allowed to drive treats the symptom, not the cause.
Guessing he didn’t pony up the money himself so its on the parents. Anyone who buys a 400hp car for their teenage kid is an idiot and shouldn’t procreate. The sad thing is he took other parents kids with him.
SRT8’s are sold with summer tires (worthless under 40 degrees), seeing as it was NY (if I read that right) then he was driving on hockey pucks. Just changed my tires to snows a week ago and it is a huge difference in grip.
If the parents are wealthy and want a nice car for the kid that is their perogative but buy something safe like an A4, 2.0 quattro. Half the hp, AWD, all-seasons and less money.
Even an STI would have been safer although that is too much car for a teen too. Better off sticking with a slow, understeering car with lots of airbags.
Seems like just another case of parents with more money than sense.
You said it, in fact I think his parents are guilty of a serious lack of judgement firstly in buying such a vehicle and secondly, it appears they did not take any steps to ground him when his license was suspended (pure speculation on my part). However I do hope and pray that the kid pulls through. It is very sad about his passengers.
Even an AWD with all-season tires would still end up in tragedy. That kind of car would’ve made him overconfident that he can’t crash. (I had that same kind of overconfidence when I bought my first Subaru and had a low-speed crash in a blizzard)
He would’ve been dangerous no matter what he drove.
Steve_S:
Better off sticking with a slow, understeering car with lots of airbags.
I’m in agreement; unfortunately, the most determined are still going to get a Darwin award. With the current state of driver’s ed + youth, it doesn’t take a whole lot of bhp to get in trouble.
I wonder what the heck I’m going to do in a little over a decade, when my kids start getting permits. Pick up a 10 year old 2008 Smart forTwo?
If his mummy and daddy woo bought him the car, i’m sure they were paying his insurance as well…and they should have known his license was suspended – i mean whatever violation he had would have then showed up on THEIR insurance quote. So um, would they not have thought to take away his keys??? He is still considered a “child” under US law, so couldn’t this come back to haunt the parents? Shouldn’t it?
Steve_S: Exactly the case for my ex, her parents leased he Audi A4’s for teh new england weather..though I never understood why she needed the 3.0L.
Restrict access? Yeah, that’ll work allright… Here in Germany, you can get a moped at the age of 14, but you’re only allowed to drive one with a 50cc engine and a top speed of 45 kph or something like that. I didn’t have one, so I can’t give you the details, but my small brother had one. And what he and basically everybody else did was remove the limiter and mess with the engine to make the thing go faster. Obviously, that is not only illegal, but very dangerous: You can tune the engine and you’ll do twice the allowed top speed, but that’ll mean that the chassis, the tires, the brakes etc. are not necessarily up to the task.
In other words, if you try to enforce something like that upon adolecents, they’ll do their best to circumvent it. Don’t even bother. Here’s a better idea: Make the driving test better, that is, teach how to handle difficult or dangerous situations properly. Maybe a mandatory trip to skip school or something similar would help.
Oh, oh, the cry has gone out because of the alleged dearth of effective driver education. Send everyone to those “advanced” driving schools, they say, where the techniques of skid control, evasive maneuvering, and finding the best line through a curve will make everyone a true expert on the highways.
Only problem is, no one has yet devised a proven method to keep drivers from crashing, especially adolescent males with a carload of their friends. Unfortunately, it’s attitude more than knowledge that counts, and this horrible crash was compounded by stupid parents giving their kid a performance car and letting him drive with a suspended license.
Driving around in the Alberta Clipper storm last night, I was reminded of my first auto collision. (Sadly, it was not my last.) I was a few months shy of turning 18 and my parents lent me the car on a night when snow and ice was in the forecast. Naturally, I skidded while driving in the storm and hit another car. Amazingly, my parents weren’t mad because they blamed themselves for lending me the car when they knew better — and I didn’t.
This was not a powerful car: ~125 hp. But lately I’ve been wondering what it takes to convince young’uns how little skill they have. I’m sure that kid who flipped the Charger thought he was the next best thing to Dale Jr until the moment those front tires started to skid. The weight, long wheelbase, and stability nannies fooled him into thinking he was a good driver.
Like many pistonheads, I think the European model is better than what the US has. But from what I understand, it combines better training with a graduated licensing system.
PGAero: If we’re looking for ways to make drivers safer, how about we implement a driver-training program in the US that matches those in most of Europe? You know, one which actually teaches people to drive properly and only issues licenses when driving skill is demonstrated. Driver training in the US is a joke.
nevergonnahappen.com
Don’t get me wrong. I agree that something should be done. But effective, serious restrictions against crap drivers would get their political representative’s panties in a wad. Not to mention the shrieks from scores of taxpayer and ‘non-profit’ legal groups who’d shop for the appropriate judges to gut such laws / regs.
Bottom line: 100 dead per day on our roadways is acceptable, even to many otherwise responsible people.
@210delray:
You’re absolutely right, it is a problem of attitude. But I think you’re missing something about skid training etc: It’s not only about controlling a skid, it’s about realizing how quick you can loose control, especially on a wet road. And if that won’t change your attitude, oh well, some people never learn until it’s too late.
@210delray:
Agree that there’s no method to keep testosterone-poisoned young men from crashing cars. However, skid control, evasive maneuvering, line-finding are ways to instill an attitude of “holy crap! there’s more to driving than I thought!” in most people. I did my first in-car, on-track driver’s ed when I was 21 and it *drastically* changed my outlook on driving.
Bad parents. No question. Just because you’re millionaires it doesn’t mean your license-suspended hotshot kid deserves a $40,000 musclecar. It is a tragedy, and would have happened whether this kid was in his Charger or if he was pushing an ’88 Oldsmobile to the limit, but brainless parents buying their kids outrageously powerful cars is nothing we need to encourage as a society.
This reminds me of a case I read about some years back where a teen-aged driver in a Trans Am (which his parents bought for him) was doing over 100, left the road, hit a culvert and was ejected through the t-tops because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. He was killed and the parents sued Pontiac for producing a car that would encourage such behavior in a teen-aged driver. They settled for a substantial amount out of court. That’s one I think Pontiac should have fought, even if the court costs ran more than the settlement cost.
Only problem is, no one has yet devised a proven method to keep drivers from crashing, especially adolescent males with a carload of their friends.
Amen. You want to make them safer drivers? Forbid them from driving with their friends. Same thing for that SUV full of teenage girls that crashed not that far back. Distracted drivers in any vehicle are the biggest recipe for disaster. Throw in an inexperienced driver wanting to show off to his buddies, and well, there you go. The only sad thing is that this kid killed his friends, and didn’t die himself. Darwin is shaking his head over that one. We had a similar case in NE a few years ago except the kids were joyriding in Mom’s Camry.
It’s stupid to give a kid a car that an experienced adult would have trouble keeping in control. But he’ll get in just as much trouble in a 95-hp Civic if he’s got someone to show off to.
This question lacks as much sense as the idea of outlawing firearms because it just so happens that criminals use them to kill people.
The kid was already driving illegally, so it makes no sense to suggest that outlawing people his age from driving cars like that will work. If he hasn’t enough respect for the law to have stayed off the road in the first place, he won’t have enough respect for it to follow any regs on how powerful a car he can drive.
Where is that quesion coming from anyway? It wasn’t asked in the NY Daily News article.
I’ve read all of the replies here and it’s sort of a “DEJAVU”. There was an accident in my area in the Fall in which 3 teens were killed. Same senario ; fast car(WRX)bad driver(17 and just off of suspension for a dui). I read about better driver ed as in Europe. The reason why that wont work here is two fold. 1) The first thing that I learned when I was in Europe was that “You are responsible for your own actions” and 2)Parents need to spend more time being parents.We state that the kids have no responsibility.Is giving a kid a 425hp rocket responsible? when I was 18 I put a deposit on a used Corvette and my father promptly made me get my money back-end of story.
Now I’m 56, I own a late model Corvette and I realize that if my father hadn’t done that I probably wouldn’t be here to write this!!Lets wake up parents.Incidentilly I have 2 grown kids one being a police officer. It’s not up to society to dictate what kids drive or don’t drive. That’s what parents are there for.
Adults do not have “shoulds”. What is the problem? really? If we have not identified a problem, then what can we do?
Kids can drive with no license and fast as long as cars and bikes exist. Every kid is different though. Its no ones fault. Hence, adults have no “shoulds”. Well the main problem is they like to drive dangerously. Cant stop em perhaps. I say first lets do our best to provide a good example, by valuing ourselves and our safety first. We can also offer our help and advice to young drivers, careful not to enable them like addicts. This is bound to happen. I think the best way is to teach them, to share with them, why our (safe) way is better. Perhaps showing them that driving fun starts with safety first, and that their lives are worth taking care of. They may need to be reminded that cars can be very dangerous. I think young people often feel invincible. The more positive influences the better. Its a win win situation.
Btw. I had a big crash at that age myself, driving the 140hp accord I bought with my own money. I found It does just fine at 120mph+. also I did not steer away suddenly when I hit the guardrail. I knew how to crash (LoL), from playing video games.
When I read a story like this I get a strange feeling. I know two children are dead but I cant help but think what on earth did EVERYONE involved in this tragedy think would be the eventual outcome of GIVING an UNLICENSED, INEXPREINCED CHILD a 425hp RWD car with low-profile summer performance tires and than allowing this CHILD to drive the car with a suspended “permit”, on a night when the road are covered in snow, and ice. Now the best part is they let him load up his car with 4 of his friends!
It is obvious that the parent was absolutely clueless as to what kind of GIFT they were giving their child. IMO they might as well have given him an M4 carbine and 500 round of 5.56mm ammo as a graduation gift. If the mother had given the gun as a gift and the child went and shot two of his friends to death we would be calling for her arrest and prosecution. Yet this mother basically put other parents chilren into the same type of danger. Commonsense would tell any parent that a 425hp car is meant to SPEED in, HELLO!
Newsflash: your damn child is only 17 YEARS OLD!
Although it may look like a toy, a Charger SRT-8 is not a toy in any way! This thing is a real machine that weighs well over 4000lbs and has enough power to scare the shit out of an expert race driver in the wrong conditions. As cars go this IS a dangerous car, by nature!
Needless to say this child and parent are totally screwed! This kid should forget about college because he will never make enough money to overcome the lawsuits that he will most definately lose. The Mother will also be sued and she too will lose. Considering that this is NY I would not be suprised if both face criminal charges for their extremely neglegent actions.
I remember a couple of stories from about 20 years ago in the NYC area. In one a father purchased a new Corvette for his H.S. graduate son. The son managed to destroy several business and kill himself in the process when he lost control. In another the son hit and killed a pedestrian in another Corvette. The father and son ended up going to jail because they unsuccessfully attempted to chop up the Corvette into dispoable sized pieces in their garage.
CAR ARE NOT TOYS!
Yes we should –
It’s called PARENTING!
We don’t need more laws, we need parents that lay down the law, and take away the keys when necessary.
The kid should have been driving a two-tone Ford Fairmont….that car builds character.
-ted
Let’s see:
1)Rich, brainless twit, Parents.
2)Spoiled, suspended, 17 year old, sh1thead son.
3)400hp car purchased by said brainless twits for said spoiled sh1thead.
4)3 friends of spoiled sh1thead dead.
Oh, baby! This is a landshark’s lawyer’s wet dream come true! Even a graduate of Brooklyn Law will have no problem of proving negligence against the brainless twit parents.
If the brainless twits don’t know, it is very likely that a jury will come back with an award that far exceeds their insurance limits. Guess who is going to make up the difference?
Have fun at your new residence in a Pennsylvania trailer park, brainless twits.
All the more reason my son will have a reliable, slow FWD shitbox as his first car. Thinking a 5-10 year old Hyundai Accent or Kia Rio(that would be a 2008-2013 model). Then I’ll take him to an empty, wet or snow covered lot and have him drive around and see what happens. Oh and the parking brake might get popped every now and then.
They should have just given him a 1000cc sportbike, at least then he would have only killed himself. Of course the bike might have scared the shit out of him too.
Even if you did restrict them I’m not sure you’d be able to enforce it. The driver was already breaking numerous laws, so I’m not sure one more would make any difference.
The drinking, smoking, and pot laws aren’t effective in stopping high school kids from doing any of it, why would restriction on cars be any different?
I’ll say it until my fingers fall off. The fact that the vehicle in question has 425 horsepower is inconsequential considering the driver was inexperienced, shouldn’t have been driving at night, shouldn’t have been speeding in poor weather, and in fact, shouldn’t have been driving at all.
The rallying cry against giving teenagers high powered cars is a knee-jerk reaction, that seems good-intentioned, but misses the point that you don’t need 425 horses to make a car dangerous in the wrong hands.
I’ve had friends, coworkers, bosses, etc. who have tales of reckless teenage abandon behind the wheel of less powerful vehicles.
If it goes against common sense to hand the keys of a 400 hp car over to a teenager, then it should go against common sense to hand the keys of a minivan to them as well.
If it goes against common sense to hand the keys of a 400 hp car over to a teenager, then it should go against common sense to hand the keys of a minivan to them as well.
Since more passengers = more distractions, that’s actually not a bad thing, and some graduated licenses restrict the numbers of passengers a probationary driver can carry – usually 1 at the most.
No, we shouldn’t. As someone who had owned a low power non performance oriented vehicle, you can get in bad trouble just as fast. First car was a Rav4. I bounced it off the speedlimiter, I drove it like a Corvette on a race course, I weaved in and out of traffic, and I raced it a couple times. You can kill yourself just as fast and just as dead in a Civic as you can an SRT-8 Charger.
So, it was already illegal? What needs to be done? He was breaking the law just as much as a drunk driver; something already has been done. There’s no legislating stupid.
South Ozone Park (where the driver lives) is not a wealthy neighborhood. This is a working-class/ middle-class typical Queens NYC neighborhood. I doubt the parent(s) are rich. They are most likely successful mom and pop business owners with very good cashflow.
When I was a freshman in College I had a friend with a 1987 Mustang GT. After one trip with him and his a$$hole method of driving I never rode in his car again. BTW he did cause serious injuries to a girl and himself driving like a fool!
At the age of 37 I can now look back and smile with understanding as to why my parents would have never allowed me (knowingly) to be a passanger in another 17 year olds “supercar”.
@ garllo.
That crash that happened in Bristol/Plainville? was a tragedy – what’s even more of a tragedy is that someone (FOOLISHLY) let a kid who is 17 and had a DUI have a license, AND gave them a nice looking WRX! That was the same child who, if he had a chance, probably would have taken more people out with him… Not just his little sister and her friend.
And right before that, we saw the same situation in Bristol – some idiot driving a WRX on RT 6 decides it’s okay to do 70MPH in a 25 MPH zone that’s KNOWN to be both busy and curvy. Only that time, the kid killed his friends, and almost another car full of people at 11:00 on a school night.
All of these kids are idiots, and all of these parents are idiots for letting their kids have fast cars while they’re still not experienced enough to have driven through a complete set of seasons.
Long story short, it takes two to tango. Not only is it the kid’s fault for driving too fast, but it’s not any help that the parents allowed it. The fact that this kid has a suspended license is the fault of the parents… However, given the situation, the child could have lied and said his friend was driving… And not knowing much about the location, maybe the car was parked in a parking garage? That’s very possible in New York City. Maybe the parents didn’t know the kid was drving… All of this is possible… However, given the nature of the kid for disobeying the rules, perhaps it would have been in their best interest to take his keys away.
I guess some people learn lessons the hard way.
Now, should there somehow be a cap on what kind of car a child should be able to drive? I don’t think so… To do that would be to stereotype the driver… Not all 17 year olds are bad drivers. I own a Subaru Impreza 2.5RS Coupe, I got it when I just turned 18. I don’t race, I don’t speed very often, and if I do, it’s only 70 MPH on the highway. Now I am 20, turning 21 in a few weeks… I’ve had two accidents… One was my fault (hit some black ice, going to fast for the conditions) and the other was because – get this, an uninsured 17 year old rear-ended me in broad daylight.
If there was a cap, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to buy this said Subaru (only 165 HP, but it looks “fast”) and you know that if a car looks fast, people would assume it was fast… But I can say, this car has kept me on the road more times than off and the all-wheel drive is a life saver in Connecticut. So perhaps you have to take the good with the bad, as you do when you get onto the road. You know there’s good and bad drivers… Just hope they don’t make you a new statistic.
Pretty much any car can go 130 mph now. I don’t think the car can be blamed; the kid just shouldn’t have been driving. It’s too bad driving is a right and not a privilege. There must have been a good reason his licence was suspended, and his friends and family should have recognized that.
Ruinedeffigy :
December 6th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
If there was a cap, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to buy this said Subaru (only 165 HP, but it looks “fast”) and you know that if a car looks fast, people would assume it was fast… But I can say, this car has kept me on the road more times than off and the all-wheel drive is a life saver in Connecticut.
I’ve never been to Connecticut, but in Saskatchewan your ability to control your vehicle on snow and ice depends on your tires and your driving style/skill. Here, AWD helps some people accelerate faster, but doesn’t help anyone maintain control any better.
I don’t see any problem with restricting
rpn453 :
“I’ve never been to Connecticut, but in Saskatchewan your ability to control your vehicle on snow and ice depends on your tires and your driving style/skill. Here, AWD helps some people accelerate faster, but doesn’t help anyone maintain control any better”
Imagine Connecticut to be like the mixed bag of winter storms. Lately it’s been pretty much Icy-snow. I remember years of little ice and alot of snow, and I remember years of only ice.
Simply stated – NO ONE has control on ice unless they have spiked tires. However – depending on how savvy you are behind the wheel of your vehicle, you can get out of a potential accident situation. I’ve been in experiences driving on back roads where I’ll turn my wheel and nothing will happen or I’ll simply spin from the back. However, I find that pressing the gas while turning the wheel in the opposite direction of my slide will keep me more on the road, than let’s say a 2WD Honda Civic. While I am not saying I exhibit superior control in the elements, I am saying that my experience of driving in the crappy weather and my knowledge of how car drives definitely attributes to me being able to say that AWD is a life saver.
The thing you have to watch out for is the people who think AWD/4WD means you can speed in the snow, neglecting to mention that while they can accelerate faster, it’s still going to take them double the time to stop their vehicle.
Nonemoreblack: there’s no legislating stupid
amen. the fact is that freedom demands that you can buy whatever you can afford (or whatever your mommy and daddy can afford). also, parents get to raise their kids as much or as little as they want (with very minor restrictions i.e. food, etc.). unfortunately, there’s no way to police responsible buying or proper instilling of wisdom in kids.
in this case, as has been pointed out, the kid was already breaking the law by driving without a valid license . . . more restrictions would be useless.
i just hope things like this make parents more cautious. it’s my responsibility to raise my daughter to be responsible in her decisions so she doesn’t hurt herself or others. for me though, i’m worried about the guys that’ll be driving my daughter around in a decade. how can i trust that their parents have raised them right?
I don’t know what the solution to this sort of problem is. Does this happen in Germany, UK, and France? If not, what’s different, and is it something we can do here?
absent the answer to that question, I think it would help if police looked for truly reckless drivers instead of going after speeders who aren’t driving recklessly. They might actually save a few lives. But they would do better to be driving around themselves on all sorts of roads than waiting in the bushes by the side of the road.
I think kids are genetically programmed differently. I wasn’t in any danger of coming to that sort of end, and my brother’s son was Mr. Cautious (I drove across the country in high school and never exceeded 55, mostly stayed at 50, trying to preserve my Ford Falcon). Some kids would find a way to drive dangerously even in underpowered K cars. (If the Germans, for example, are finding ways to suppress this dangerous behavior, we need to learn from them.) Martin Schwoerer?
# Megan Benoit :
Only problem is, no one has yet devised a proven method to keep drivers from crashing, especially adolescent males with a carload of their friends.
Amen. You want to make them safer drivers? Forbid them from driving with their friends.
I’m pretty sure there are states that have graduated licensing that doesn’t allow new drivers to have non-adult passengers, and I agree that it’s a great idea.
Should anything be done?
No.
You can’t legislate stupidity away, no matter how you try, though in many ways legislating against stupidity is “fighting fire with fire.”
–chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org
I was going to write something witty about how well Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection worked in this instance, but I couldn’t because it would be so heartless and insensitive to the devastated families.
I’m just curious. How many “experienced” adults driving “proper” small, low powered, front wheel drive vehicles with ABS, ETC, airbags and every other electronic nanny known to man, died yesterday on the roads of New York? How about in the last 30 days?
But, somehow, this kid was the only “idiot” that made the news?
Nah, couldn’t be an agenda at work here, could there?
skor: If the brainless twits don’t know, it is very likely that a jury will come back with an award that far exceeds their insurance limits. Guess who is going to make up the difference?
Have fun at your new residence in a Pennsylvania trailer park, brainless twits.
I’m no lawyer – so I may be mistaken – but I think bankruptcy protects a lot of home value in NY State. Or there’s some other legal animal that prohibits going after assets in cases where insurance dries up…
Wolven: I’m just curious. How many “experienced” adults driving “proper” small, low powered, front wheel drive vehicles with ABS, ETC, airbags and every other electronic nanny known to man, died yesterday on the roads of New York? How about in the last 30 days?
There will alway be auto deaths in every age group. However, the stats for young drivers (especially men) are horrific. I’ve heard of rural school districts where it’s common that 10% of graduating classes are dead from car wrecks by their 20th reunion.
It’d be interesting to see how the US stacks up against other nations in this stat…
@ ihatetrees
I’m no liar for hire lawyer either, but do you doubt that this will cost mommy and daddy dearly?
These people provided a new 400+hp car to a minor with a suspended DL who then went on to cause 3 fatalities. That’s negligence on their part, and it’s going to cost them, as it should.
Parents buying high powered cars for their new drivers are being stupid. Not only are they putting extra risk on the lives of said kids, but also on the rest of us who share the roads with them.
Our current US system of minimal driver training and testing after which anyone is legally qualified to drive any car is absurd on the face of it. I don’t know if the government can fix that problem, but it sure is nuts.
Our daughter has been driving for a year now in a 1993 Volvo 240 station wagon, one of the all time great first cars. Luckily she loves the car and is by nature a careful driver.
It is true that a bad driver can get in trouble in any car, but the frequency with which such mishaps occur goes up dramatically with high performance vehicles. There are good reasons why insurance rates are dramatically higher for Corvettes than they are for Malibus. The highest cost vehicle to insure in the US …. Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourCar/10CostliestCarsToInsure.aspx
From the pictures I saw of the accident, the Dodge appeared to be wearing aftermarket shoes. As with most large aftermarket wheel purchases, I am pretty sure the kid (or mom) did not go out and choose M+S.
A few days ago we had a 19 yr old tear a VW Jetta in half while trying to pass someone on icy roads. He had a head on with an oncoming truck, killing the driver of the pickup truck. The VW driver and his passenger were airlifted and listed in critical condition. The accident tore the back half off the car, and left the engine laying in the roadway. the halves of the car landed 30 ft apart.
Kids are going to drive stupid, no matter what you give them. No “HP” limit or “HP/Weight ratio” is going to fix that. Fewer video games/movies glorifying driving like a retard would be a good start
David Holzman: I don’t know what the solution to this sort of problem is. Does this happen in Germany, UK, and France? If not, what’s different, and is it something we can do here?
Don’t know about France or the United Kingdom, but in Germany people aren’t eligible for a license until they turn 18, and it costs lots of time and money to get one.
Interestingly, Germans drive faster than we do, even on those parts of the Autobahn with a speed limit. But I sense a greater respect for speed and what cars can do over there. (They are also much more interested in the technical aspect of cars, and would never make vehicles like the F-150 or Camry best sellers.)
People take driving more seriously (no yakking on the cell phone, for example), and have a more “mature” view of speed. They aren’t running around squawking that “speed kills,” but they don’t glorify “hooning,” either.
Fast driving is seen as a pleasurable, safe and rapid way to get where you are going, and both cars and drivers are expected to have the capabilities necessary to handle it when on the Autobahn.
Should teenagers be given access to cars like this? No. Do we need a law stating it? No. It is up to the parents to determine what their offspring drive. These parents made a poor choice.
My own children can look forward to a slow, underperforming tank, preferably with a manual transmission, as their first vehicle.