rx8wannahave

Yeah...if your old enough to go fight in a war then you are BY FAR old enough to drive. 18 would not be bad but I do agree that alot of it is simply the parents fault.

There are alot of kids who get their first car given to them by their parents while ignoreing the fact that it's a performance car that probably is not the best car for beginners.

I have self imposed (also based on money to be honest here) a gradual sports car upgrade with the cars I've driven. First it was the NX2000 then the Probe GT and now the most powerful car I've owned...the RX8. It's very important to take it easy with sporty cars instead of starting off with 300HP when you can't even handle 150HP.

It's so immature really...WHO CARES IF YOUR CAR IS FASTER THAN MINE!!! Is that going to change my life in any useful way or yours? No...not really, but if you hurt someone because of your dumb decision...that is SURE TO CHANGE a life, hurt a family, and maybe even take someones life.

TAKE IT TO A TRACK!!!

Pkskull77

The reason young men care about that stuff is because it’s ingrained in our heads from the second we are conceived. In nature males show their gusto and sexual superiority by proving that their goods are the biggest and baddest. In our civilization that “superiority” has transferred to our possessions, he who has the best house, car, job, etc... wins. There is no more portable manifestation of our “superiority" than cars. Strait line domination is easy to test, and therefore it has become the end all, and be all of manhood.

That being said, there is no more humbling experience than knowing your car is inferior. Us 8 owners know the feeling. Essentially, give your kid a bad car, and he will be unwilling to test the limits. Parents are ultimately responsible. In my minds eye they should be the ones charged with the crime when their kids kill someone.

Thats never going to happen, so get used to seeing the sad headlines.

zhizoe

Sure kids shouldn't have GTOs when they turn 16, but from my experience kids will try to race in anything. I've seen kids try to race in jeep wranglers. I think the only thing that's immune is an old wood panneled station wagon. Or maybe a minivan.

Pkskull77

Kids will race them a little bit, but once they get their lunch handed to them a couple of times they will tone it down. Also if the car is slow, it takes a lot more work to get it up to insane speeds, so the chances are slimmer that they will be hitting people at 90 mph.

babylou

It sounds like he needs to change his major and flunk a few classes.

Gambit

My kids are gettin the same thing I got when I got my liscense, a 13 year old POS.

Rhawb

You neglected to think of pretty much any Honda Civic ever. Ninety-nine percent of them don't have gusto, but damn if kids aren't driving them like they're F1 cars (aero parts included).

No More Oldsmobiles

Just for the sake of argument, let's pick a random ethnic group and say that statistics show they have worse driving records on average. Discrimination called for?

zhizoe

I remember when Warren Mosler's daughter Sada turned 16 he built her this big yellow thing to drive around. It didn't really work though, because she would always take the f150 instead. But I think that's an untapped market. Design an inexpensive safety-mobile that is guarenteed to suck the coolness out of teenagers and market it to their parents.

Pkskull77

Not that I believe that men driver discrimination would be upheld by any court, or even legislated, but comparing race and sex in constitutional law does not work. Race is far more protected than gender. Racial Law being evaluated by the courts receives the highest form of scrutiny; know as "strict scrutiny." The level that the court would evaluate gender on is "intermediate scrutiny." The difference in practice is light years apart.

If you interested here is a quick summary.


http://www.wifcon.com/analadarscrutiny.htm

zhizoe

Hey now, don't put that statement on me. That was NMO.

Pkskull77

Yeah sorry my bad.

himitsu

It kinda reminds me of my uni days, my dad was pretty well off, I go to a good school, and I used to get jealous when a few of my friends came to school with nice sports cars... me, all I got is a students bus card. So I got into an argument with my dad, called him stingy and all that... but 10 years on, I realized how right he is.
I still love cars, I work and bought my first second hand S2000 3 years ago, then a new RX8 recently, its a very different feeling buying your own cars, knowing how much sweat you shed just to get the car, automatically you will drive better than you would if its a freebie from mom and dad...

Thats why, at most even if I buy my kids a car, they will be driving a Hyundai or Prius or Insight, no asking daddy for sports cars, and no touching daddys sports cars either.

Kids and performance cars dont mix period...

BlueEyes

I disagree, irresponsible people and performance cars don't mix. I have driven various sports cars from mustangs to ferrari's owned by freinds and relatives since I got my liscence (age 16) and I am perfectly fine and so is everyone around me, and the cars too.

Rhawb

Agreed. Irresponsible people are going to be irresponsible regardless of age. I've been lucky enough to have been entrusted with some very nice and very sporty cars (mostly by being allowed to drive parents/friends cars, but I suppose I have an 8 now, so that counts too) ever since I've gotten my license because I've been raised to appreciate the power and cost of these cars. I know better than to take them for granted and go do stupid things with them.

That being said, ever since my first days on the road, I've seen people well over twice my age pulling stupid stunts I'd never even think of trying on public roads and which I'd be hesitant to try even on a track (the time I saw a 30ish year old looking guy sliding an SUV around a corner doing about 40 comes to mind).

Irresponsibility doesn't necessarily discriminate by age, though responsibility does tend to come with experience. I know there are kids out there responsible enough to have high powered and/or expensive cars, you just need to be careful which ones you're giving them to.

No More Oldsmobiles

True, and you cite facts, which is always appreciated. But I was offering this more as a for-instance.

AFAIK, higher insurance rates have been the norm for young males. Aratinga says, "Face it gentlemen -- this is one case where sex discrimination is called for and necessary." The phrase "this is one case ..." suggests there are other cases where sex discrimination is "called for and necessary." Which opens up a whole can of worms about any kind of discrimination being justified and "necessary."

I bet I know what the answer would be, though, if anyone suggested that men are stronger, faster, etc., and therefore discrimination is called for in jobs such as firefighters. I bet the answer would be that the generalization doesn't fit every women, and some women are qualified. Sure. But Aratinga's generalization about men doesn't apply to every man out there, either, so why should we accept it?

zhizoe

The reason the insurance companies use it is because it's easy. Really they could probably get more accurate results by giving every one of their clients a personality and driving test, but it's easier for them to just go by demographics. Sort of like Affirmative action. It's much easier to go by race then by economic background. Not to open up that can of worms which is probably better left to the lounge.


As far as people being irresponsible period, you have a point in that there are plenty of irresponsible adults. But i think the bigger point is that pretty much everyone gets more responsible as they get older. So while there would be responsible people who would not get their license until they're 18, even they would be more responsible at 18 then they were when they were 16.

shorty911

now hold on a couple of u im 17 i dont street race i mean i do some stupid stuff but i dont do that kinda stuff and i dont drive like an idiot so i dont think no teenagers should be able to own sports cars.

Rhawb

True, I'm not necessarily arguing that the driving age shouldn't be raised. In fact, raising it may work some serious magic for my insurance rates...Rather, I'm saying that I don't think it's necessarily fair to say "no teenagers are responsible enough to own a sports car."

Sure, the large majority are not responsible enough to own such cars, but I have several friends along with myself who proved we were mature enough to drive these cars and we handled ourselves accordingly. On the other side of the fence, there was the kid who flipped his brand new BMW over a median, over an oncoming car, and into a tree on the other side of the road...only to be punished with a new BMW. These are the teenagers we shouldn't hand sports/luxury cars to. In fact, these are kids who I'm not sure should even be licensed drivers.

Unfortunately, because the large majority of young drivers get behind the wheel and pull dumb stunts, ALL young drivers get to pay astronomical insurance rates. I don't necessarily blame the insurance companies for this, since they're simply basing their rates on statistics, I just wish they could find a way to trim the prices back for those of us who take it seriously.

himitsu

Cmon guys, lets face the facts, Im sure insurance companies dont simply raise it simply because they find its easy its based on real claim statistics, everyone time someone claims, the number is automatically added to penalize the demographics... so its not they estimate the number of damages from people 21, its because all these years they get the most claims from young drivers, so the premium keep going up.

So the plain hard number is just that, young kids are most likely to be reckless, hot tempered, just plain immature, Ive been through that stage once, Im just 28 now so I still know what its like being young.
Sure we have very good young people here, in fact from the posts here you can see, the quality of the people here, I see none of those K0oL EL1tZ Dud3Z P0Zts in this forum, I believe you guys drive good and love your cars... but the fact of life is that like 95.9% of your peers are not.

I hope my kids when they are 17 will turn out OK like you guys, but still you never know how people turn out, theres lots of horror stories with good parents and spoilt kids, so I would rather not take my chance and give them say an RX12 or S4000... call me biased, but I see no harm in being biased in this case...

RatedR_RX-8

I will agree with several people in saying that responsiblility comes down to parents talking to thier kids about this kind of thing . Prime example is my dad telling me about when he was younger and when he street raced and how he looks back on it and says he was stupid. I still went to them but i didn't race due to the fear of injury to myself and others and the serious law reprocutions. As for the male female bit that is a load of bull and i have seen females damn near cause accidents or cause accidents more often then guys, just when guys go out they go out with a bang.

rx8wannahave

You know what I would REALLY LOVE...

I would like to put a speed control device on my (future) childs car. It would work with GPS & Navi to determine the max speed on certain roads. It would then NOT ALLOW the car/driver to speed. If this road calls for 45 max then 45 max, if this road is 35...then 35, etc etc etc

How about a law that states that (if the age does not go up) that a car driven by a 16-18 year old HAS to have that device since they are in the beginner stage of driving. Maybe that would at least cut down on the speed of accidents.

Furthermore if it detects rain/snow it cuts the speed by 5 mph. Heck...one last thing, if they are following too close it will sound a warning beep...ever louder until they back off.

Insurance companies could then give HUGE discounts to parents/teens that have this device thus helping us all save some money. :D

guy321

There is a service down in Manatee county (probably to be expanded soon) where they allow parents to track thier children's location using any gps enabled phone. You can actually see them on a map moving. They could probably gather the speed at which they are travelling too..

BTW, limiting max speed to the speed limit could be dangerous. Sometimes you need to speed up to avoid a collision or to gain speed incase a small animal runs out infront of your car.

rx8wannahave

Poor little animals...but, getting into an accident because of them is just not an option.

Yeah...but how many accidents get avoided because someone increased speed? I would love to see those stats...I still think that it might still be a good system.

Here is the compromise...the system will allow short 1-2 sec burst of speed just in case...

BlueEyes

I think we should take liscences away from women over 60.