Teenage drivers need to shoulder responsibility

It's a pity teens should figure in the news for all the wrong reasons. This doesn't help in changing the way the world generally views us.

Two weeks ago, families were torn apart because of one teenager looking for some fun. As The National reported, a young man, only 16, driving without a licence, knocked down two men crossing the road (16-year-old joyrider kills two and flees scene, December 16, 2011).

It wouldn't have made a difference if the teenager in question did have a licence, anyway, because trundling along at 200 kph, almost double the speed limit of most roads, no one could have screeched to a stop quickly enough: the car simply couldn't be under the driver's control.

At the risk of sounding preachy, I must say it's a pity teenagers should feature in the news for all the wrong reasons. This doesn't help to do anything about the way the world generally views us – as insensitive warts who only care about their gadgets and smartphones and shopping malls, and little about anyone other than their immediate peer groups. It doesn't help, either, that my parents have enough misgivings about letting their teenager whoosh around on accident-plagued Dubai roads in a couple of years' time, without reading about one more horror story that's going to make them trust teenagers and their ability to handle cars that little bit less. Trust builds trust, whine all those self help gurus. Nope. Evidence of being trustworthy does, which is much harder to come by.

Safety is something we are lectured on all too often, but it's worrying that accidents such as these still happen, and it's not just the young people: adults are responsible for a massive part of the accidents. As much as teenagers like to do things differently from those whom they consider prehistoric (over the age of 20), it's not much of an example some of the adults are setting if we're witnessing speeding cars and gruesome collisions on a daily basis.

"Kids think they're invincible," someone grumbled the other day, echoing a view held by a lot of grown-ups who've come a long way since their teenage years. "Think they can get away with anything without getting hurt, think there's no way something bad could happen to them."

Er, of course a 16-year-old's mental capacity is developed enough to know that getting into a powerful metal machine and zooming it around in a public place carries with it a certain risk of great personal injury. Teenagers know there's a risk involved. That's exactly why we do it. It's the knowledge of doing something that could easily be fatal, or get you into pretty serious trouble, that really gets the adrenalin flooding the system.

The 16-year-old who was involved in the accident was using his brother's car, too; it's possible he wouldn't have been quite as slapdash if the car had been bought with his own hard-earned money. If that shiny Porsche is a product of years of honest work, saving up, astute investments and a loan you know you'll have to repay yourself, you're probably going to be rather more careful with it than if you'd received it as a birthday present.

Most teenagers I know rarely wear seat belts, because, like, honestly - who wears seat belts? It's a sissy thing. But then again, if your car's smashing into another one, being a sissy would be preferable, I would imagine, to flying into the windscreen and cracking your head open.

An underage driver may argue that since he knows what the consequences could be, and is prepared to put his own life in danger, it's nobody's business to bother him about it. Though his or her parents may have allowed him the privilege to take out the car, it plainly doesn't work like that, because we aren't just responsible for our own safety.

Underage driving, as well as talking on the phone while driving, drink driving and most of the plethora of offences that are against the law, affect other people just as much. You're putting into jeopardy the lives of not only the other drivers on the road, but potentially hurting their friends, family and children who may eagerly be waiting for mum or dad to return home. The odd pedestrian who may have bravely ventured out, already facing a lack of proper pavements in the city, is scared back into cars with every accident we read about.

And that, perhaps, is what teenagers have yet to grasp - that when we compromise our own safety, it's not just our own safety we're compromising. There's no shortcut: we'll just have to get down to it and prove that we can be trusted - after proper driving lessons and a licence, of course - and that's when we might just be allowed to take the family Volkswagen to Spinneys for the groceries. If we're lucky.

The writer is a 16-year-old student in Dubai