Where I qualified, there’s a mandatory speed limit of 45mph on all roads (even motorways) a year after qualifying. When I was finally free of this I had absolutely zero respect for why speed can be dangerous and how. The rules had created the incredibly dangerous combination of experience driving but no experience driving at speed, and teenager brain.
Shackles off, I drove at 60mph on country roads. It was always fine! Just like when I did 45mph everywhere!
Until it rained, and at a tight corner I nearly wrapped myself around a tree.
I didn’t fully appreciate the speeds I was going to be doing because I never was trained at them. I had no idea how it actually felt and how to understand when I could use speed and when I could lay off, because the limit was there.
It was so suffocating that I never really experienced understeer or circumstances where I was in danger, because the mollycoddled experience hid me from understanding what those dangers are and how to anticipate and prevent them.
Limiting speed is an answer, but I don’t really think it’s a good answer. The most dangerous crashes (rural) will still happen and be easily fatal at 70mph.
Trainee pilots will get put in dangerous feeling situations all the time; the instructor can put the plane into a stall or a dive - a terrifying situation that you should never put yourself in in the first place - and teach you how to recover.
I always thought driving instruction could do with something like that, because while learning to recover a plane is a lesson in and of itself, experiencing that sinking feeling and imagining it in circumstances where you’re under less control is a crucial lesson and disincentive.
Instead, youths experience that lesson when they see a rapidly approaching tree or brick wall instead of a tire wall.
Personally, I think it's way too easy to get a license in the USA.
In many states, driver's ed isn't even mandatory, so people get taught by their parents, which leads to massive gaps in education and in many cases, incorrect driving habits getting passed down between generations. For example, a friend of mine had his mom tell him to just stay in the left lane on the highway if his exit isn't coming up, training him to be a passing lane camper.
Not only should driver's ed be mandatory, but it should include a LOT more hands-on driving in bad situations, not to mention make them do something like an emergency stop test in both dry and wet conditions so they can understand the increased stopping distance and potential loss of control when slamming the brakes on water.
I'd even like them make drivers do a basic slalom course in both a small sedan or hatchback and a large SUV so they can possibly get an appreciation for different handling.
My local raceway has a car control course for training people how to control a skid [0]. I think this kind of training should be a mandatory part of earning a license.
I can't agree with this enough. If you could just drive at 55mph in a straight line everywhere with nothing in your way, current education would be fine, but that's not reality. Part of driver's training should involve you driving a vehicle hard (autocross, slalom, etc), preferably of multiple different sizes/configurations so you can see the differences in handling. I know that idea will make people squeamish, but people panic in dangerous situations and do crazy shit like turn their wheel full lock and lock up the brakes because they actually have zero idea what that results in.
On a similar note, maintenance should be mandatory training, as well. Basic ability to evaluate brakes, tires, suspension, etc. should be a given. I live in a state without inspections and the number of people whose reaction to metal-on-rotor in their brakes being "teehee whoops!" is shocking. If you can't afford the maintenance, that's fair enough in the sense that you need a vehicle to live in much of the US, but you should at least know the state of your vehicle and what that means when you're driving it.
> I know that idea will make people squeamish, but people panic in dangerous situations and do crazy shit like turn their wheel full lock and lock up the brakes because they actually have zero idea what that results in.
Yeah...people argue over whether to "steer into" or "steer out" of a skid, and what gets me is that sometimes, both people mean the same thing but are calling it something different, and the reality is that it depends on the skid.
Every driver should know the difference between understeer and oversteer. Understeer? Straighten the wheel. If you have ABS, continue holding the brake, otherwise lighten up the brake pressure so the front tires can regain grip and steer the car. Oversteer? Forget arguing about steering into/out of the skid, and instead think about pointing the front tires in the direction you want to go. More importantly, DON'T slam the brakes! Any braking action will take weight off the rear tires and make the oversteer WORSE. Braking during oversteer is how drifters increase drift angle. If you're trying to straighten out, that's not what you want!
But the squeamishness, yeah...I suggested to my wife that these courses should be a requirement, and she thought it'd be too dangerous. I kept saying, in a large flat concrete pad with no walls (or very soft walls), there's no danger. She wasn't convinced. I think she was worried about cars flipping over from sliding, and I said that it's impossible to make anything that isn't a tall SUV roll from just aggressive steering, and even the tall SUVs don't typically roll. When they do, they get really bad safety reviews.
I've often thought the same is true of most well-intentioned efforts to protect young people - young people still have to learn the same lessons later. But I was most stuck by your first sentence:
> Where I qualified, there’s a mandatory speed limit of 45mph on all roads (even motorways) a year after qualifying.
That sounds terrifying and dangerous! Aren't the other cars on a motorway there speeding past at 70mph+?
Ford has had this ability on many of their cars for years. It’s called MyKey. You can program a keyfob so the car has various limits and safety features can’t be disabled.
Seems like a nice system. I was surprised I’d never heard about it until I bought a Ford and found it in the manual.
I wonder if any other manufacturers have something similar.
I'm a Tesla-owning parent whose first child will be receiving their license in a few months. And... this is cute, but I think most of its value is in marketing via press hits like this (which push "High Tech Gadget-filled Supercar" narrative). Actual driving safety is a boring and fairly well-understood problem. And if a kid can get in trouble in the family minivan or crossover (and they absolutely can) they can in a settings-crippled Model S too.
As far as real policy goes: he'll be driving the 12-year-old minivan primarily for the first year or so. Not because of genuine safety concerns (he's actually a pretty cautious kid) but just because new drivers get in a lot of wrecks and we'd rather that happen in the car that's cheaper to fix and easier to replace.
Every kid is different. In highschool I had plenty of friends that would be way more dangerous (to themselves and others) in a fast car than in a speed limited car.
Does that make the car safe? Well, in relative terms, yes it does. Probably 100x less likely to cause fatality for specific kids. Not yours maybe, but a lot of them. Parents usually know if that's their kid or not. There are plenty of signs.
> Probably 100x less likely to cause fatality for specific kids.
FWIW, that's ridiculous. If a popular car showed a 100x increase in fatalities for some common demographic, that would show up in the data. Sites like HN would be away in "Teen Boy Killer" Tesla articles. It's not.
I won't speak to the anecdata, clearly some kids want to drive fast. But speed on regular roads is limited by the roads, not the car. A Corolla or Outback is no less capable of reaching those speeds, its just takes 3-4 seconds longer to do it. That's the kind of delta that, sure, might show up in the data if you look hard (it's a solid hypothesis), but 100x is nonsense.
I actually strongly disagree. My first accident occurred because I accidentally spun the wheels on a rainy night while trying to get to highways speeds. This was an SUV we used for towing. Rear wheel drive with lots of power. I wasn’t messing around or driving recklessly, I just put too much power in poor conditions and I downshift broke the tires free. Since either was rear wheel drive, we fish tailed into the ditch.
It would have been nearly impossible for me to do that in a minivan. Even if I could have gotten enough power out, the front wheels would have broken loose in a much more predictable and recoverable manner.
A wreck in the old minivan is financially less expensive, but isn’t the Tesla much safer for your child in the event of an accident? I can replace my car with insurance, but I can’t replace my kid.
In a lot of cases adding your child as a primary driver to a very expensive car will significantly increase the cost of the insurance. My brother quadrupled my father's insurance price, for instance, because he was a teenager. Most people can't afford to just eat the increased monthly, so they have to balance the need to have their kid be functional in the real world with the need to make sure their kid is "safe." A lot of older vehicles are still fairly safe in common accidents, as "older" in many cases means driver and passenger airbags, seat belts, crumple zones, and so on. I think the most you can say here is that you can afford to have your kid drive the Tesla. Many people can't.
I could make some points about how the NHTSA values occupant safety over the safety of people in other cars but that's a totally different discussion.
These stats are garbage though, and there have been so many analyses of the statistical and logical flaws in Tesla's reporting that there's no way that it's not at least knowingly misleading, at this point.
That being said, Teslas ARE safe vehicles. They are regularly in the top tier for IIHS safety reports. I don't mean to decry that.
Incrementally. EV's with their very low c.g. and high mass are indeed really safe, but frankly so are minivans. If the choice was the Model Y or a 1970's Jeep or whatever, then the calculus might be different.
I don't sweat that stuff, it's the same logic that keeps kids in booster seats long after their friends are riding shotgun.
I definitely took my minivan unintentionally off-road once or twice, but I drove a lot more responsibly in it that I would have in a Hellcat because it lacked the performance to do anything else. A Model S is a unique vehicle, it has more than enough power to get you out of a lot of traditionally sticky situations and (in my admittedly limited experience) its drivers know this and drive like it.
I guess I'm saying that if I had a kid I'd prefer them to learn the capabilities of a more average car before moving on to a sports car. Habits are a safety feature.
An example of what I mean is merging next to an 18 wheeler. In most cars including my ol' minivan that takes a somewhat concerted effort. Pick a slot, match speed, communicate intent. A Tesla (or any sports car, really) doesn't need to do any of that. You can just lay on the accelerator because you can reasonably assume that you'll always be able to outmaneuver the other vehicle, and drivers often do. I don't blame them, it's way more fun that way.
My argument is that a big part of learning to drive is building understanding and empathy for the other inhabitants of the road, and sports cars don't do a good job of this.
As a father of an about to be 16 year old, this is a very welcome and potentially life saving feature. I was already considering a Tesla for my next vehicle, but this makes it all the more appealing.
A delta-V limit would be “constant” in that the teenager would build it into their mental model of how a car drives, and take it into account if/when exceptional circumstances do occur.
The greater risk comes from the car spinning out of control from a standstill because of enthusiastic acceleration.
As for safety, it’s not often we need to outrun a pyroclastic cloud/tornado/airplane crashing into your path.
What is an example of a life saving reason to go faster? What are the chances of that situation happening vs a situation where the young driver will exceed the speed limit and cause injury?
...At which point the panicky parent needs to have enough restraint to sit and stew and get the story later, rather than immediately phoning a teenager who's driving fast in a life-saving situation.
Sometimes it is better for kids (and adults) to make mistakes and get the proper punishment, than to prevent them from making mistakes at all. It gets a little greyer when the mistake can lead to death or permanent injury though.
I guess it depends whether you trust the software more than your kid. I personally wouldn't, but my kids are pretty risk-averse compared to their friends.
If you know they're not mature enough to obey speed limits, don't let them drive your car. Stop leaving it to the government or corporations to parent your kids.
Shackles off, I drove at 60mph on country roads. It was always fine! Just like when I did 45mph everywhere!
Until it rained, and at a tight corner I nearly wrapped myself around a tree.
I didn’t fully appreciate the speeds I was going to be doing because I never was trained at them. I had no idea how it actually felt and how to understand when I could use speed and when I could lay off, because the limit was there.
It was so suffocating that I never really experienced understeer or circumstances where I was in danger, because the mollycoddled experience hid me from understanding what those dangers are and how to anticipate and prevent them.
Limiting speed is an answer, but I don’t really think it’s a good answer. The most dangerous crashes (rural) will still happen and be easily fatal at 70mph.
Trainee pilots will get put in dangerous feeling situations all the time; the instructor can put the plane into a stall or a dive - a terrifying situation that you should never put yourself in in the first place - and teach you how to recover.
I always thought driving instruction could do with something like that, because while learning to recover a plane is a lesson in and of itself, experiencing that sinking feeling and imagining it in circumstances where you’re under less control is a crucial lesson and disincentive.
Instead, youths experience that lesson when they see a rapidly approaching tree or brick wall instead of a tire wall.