Editorial: What are we doing to prepare our teens for the road?

Hawke's Bay Today senior reporter Doug Laing. Photo / File.

With Road Safety Week throwing a focus on young drivers it's time again to consider how well teens are being prepared for a safe life at the wheel.

Considering a driver's licence is also one of the first necessities in the CV for a job, New Zealand has still not come to grips with the importance of getting its teenagers and young adults trained.

More than 60,000 teenager Kiwis will be leaving school this year, but barely 20 per cent will be fully licensed before they turn 19.

It seems a no-brainer not to have this figure turned around as quickly as possible, but we live in a society where cost remains a prohibitor.

While there are subsidised schemes available, the cost of getting through the licence stages, including the defensive driving course to advance the full licence by six months, is more than $500, and more if lessons from the professionals are included.

It disadvantages the most prone teenagers, those most needing the process of discipline and respect for the road but whose guidance is sometimes left to fast and furious, or unlicensed or even disqualified drivers among them, without reference even to the Road Code.

The worst consequences of not fronting this as a basic target of education are unthinkable and sadly too familiar, either in the gory images of vehicles shedding bodies across the asphalt at the end of a chase with the constabulary or amassing unpayable fines on the path to a date with the judge.

Given that the driving licence is a symbol in the coming of age, and something to be privileged, it makes no sense at all that we don't aim to have all of our teenagers fully trained to operate on our roads as soon as possible.

It is adult irresponsibility to have anything less.