Speed Kills campaign fails again

Now I know everyone is going to jump on my back and beat me to the ground, I can’t win either way, but it's been a while since I've had a chance to vent, so just hear me out.

An accident in Sydney last night really highlights my point. Five teenagers in a car  considered to be fit for P plate consumption (a Toyota Camry), were seriously injured, one critically, when the car they were travelling in left the road and hit a pole (police have seized the car for a mechanical examination).

OK, so perhaps the five were egging each other on – ban passengers you say, maybe they were speeding – more cameras hoorah, or perhaps by simply trying just a little too hard they very quickly found themselves in a position they did not know how to handle... and that’s the clincher.

Now you do-gooders can nail me to a cross and say it encourages hormonal stupidity but seriously, had the driver attended a Defensive Driving or Car Control course as a mandatory part of his licensing test then maybe, just maybe, he’d have been able to correct the skid and they’d all be home sleeping-in this morning.

I cannot stress strongly enough how much I believe this kind of training would save lives and it appalls me that our governing bodies don’t do more to encourage it. Our licensing tests are a joke, I reckon if I had a spare three weeks I could train a dog to pass it.

If just some of the millions of dollars spent on useless pinky finger waving speed kills gory death ads were spent on driver safety programs I think we’d have a much safer mind-set and more capable demographic of younger drivers on our roads.

Matt Brogan