They can be both clever and clever. Ambitious and capable.
But it simply doesn’t make sense to give them the keys to ton-heavy killing machines on wheels and let them race off alone on the country roads of North Jutland.
This is proposed by Minister for Rural Districts Morten Dahlin from the Liberal Party.
Already today, 17-year-olds can drive if they have an adult companion in the car.
That makes sense. Because the problem is not that 17-year-olds CAN’T drive a car.
The problem is that 17-year-old (especially) boys take too many risks on average. And that also applies in traffic.
It is therefore not too surprising that the Council for Safe Traffic warns against the government’s proposal, which comes as part of an overall rural district plan.
– We are concerned about this proposal because calculations already show that it will result in more killed and seriously injured 17-year-olds every year, says deputy director Karina Petersen.
I myself grew up in the countryside just outside a town with just over 100 inhabitants.
And when I was a teenager, I had to cycle for 10 minutes by myself to get to a bus stop that could take me the 35 minutes to school.
If you were five minutes late for the bus, you could wait an hour for the next one. And the same the other way.
Since I went to secondary school, the bus connections have only gotten significantly worse in the rural areas. For example, the route I just mentioned that I took has been discontinued.
So the problem is very real for the young people who do not want to be jailed because their parents have made a choice to live far away from schools, friends and cultural facilities.
But is it worth more deaths and injuries that a small group of young people in rural areas get a little more freedom to drive to handball practice?
We now know so much about the brains of young people that it seems totally unthinkable for the Liberals to want to give even younger men and women access to cars, which with just a second of inattention or a bit too much speed can maim and kill others in traffic.
We know that most fatal accidents happen in land zones. We also know that many young people use mobile phones when they drive.
So let’s invest in better public transport for young people in secondary education. And in several cycle paths, so that the young dare to take the bike to handball or the youth club.
It’s better than them having to go out alone and press the accelerator to the bottom, so it ends up that we don’t want to send our children under the age of 17 onto the roads either.
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2024-08-22 19:29:54
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