TOP STORY: When will they learn?

CATHERINE WOULFE "When are you kids going to bloody well learn?" The police officer who pulled Ricky Moulder over shakes his head, at a loss to understand the teen driver's attitude.
"You're not the one who has to scrape the dead kids off the roads," he says.
Ricky's mates are aghast at the policeman's blunt comment. "That's a bit rough," they protest, but this particular 18-year-old should know, better than anyone, the true horror behind Hawke's Bay's appalling road toll.
It was a Friday night, just like this, when Ricky and five of his mates hopped into his turbo-charged Mazda Familia. At 11pm, the car slammed into a totara tree in Windsor Avenue, Hastings, at 140km/h, killing Dylan Brittin, Alex Scales, Michael Jeffries and the driver, Che Orbell-Pere.
The crash sent the community into shock and put Ricky in hospital for four weeks. He was told his brain was damaged and could "blank out". Doctors apparently warned him not to drive for a year.
But last Friday night he was back on the road in his new car - a purple Nissan Silvia, lowered, with tape over the holes where the spoiler used to be.
At 11pm, he had a gorgeous girl beside him and 150 hotted-up cars snaking in convoy ahead of him, on their way to Fernhill to do some illegal drag racing.
The drag chain, lead by Speculator crew organiser Lance Pratt, had taken a long time to reach Napier. The convoy's speed varied between 5km/h and 120km/h, and the group - most of whom weren't officially Speculator members - had spent half an hour comparing cars and doing burnouts in the Napier Pak 'n' Save carpark.
Speculator committee member Jared Eastall said Ricky was definitely not part of the Speculator crew. He'd earlier hassled the group in a Hastings carpark and Jared said that people like Ricky were giving boyracers a bad name.
The Speculator group hadn't seen Ricky after they left Hastings, Jared said.
When Ricky reached Ahuriri, he started fishtailing slightly on corners and was following the car in front very closely. It turned out to be a mufti police car.
As the red-and-blue lights blipped and Ricky pulled over, his friends drove past, swearing in disbelief.
"That's insane - he drifted round that corner," one said.
"He went right up that cop's arse."
Ricky was pulled over at 11.30pm. The officers who stopped him were quickly joined by another police car. Two carloads of his friends who had been following the drag chain doubled back to support him.
"He'll try and talk his way out of it," they nodded on their way back. "He's not meant to drive for a year. His crash - they said his brain could blank out or something.
Why do his parents let him drive? What an idiot." Ricky was laughing as his friends arrived, but quickly shut up when police told him his car would be impounded and he would probably lose his licence.
"We can be as cold as we like, mate," said a police officer, looking the sullen teenager straight in the eye before taking his details.
Ricky's car was too low to be driven onto the tow truck - a problem the truck driver said he'd never had before. Ricky and his friends complained about the damage being done to the front of the car and took photos as proof.
"Who's going to pay for that?" Ricky asked indignantly.
After half an hour police gave up on the tow truck and drove the Silvia to the impound lot. Ricky caught a ride with a friend to Havelock North.
He pulled faces out the window and laughed as the group drove around Hastings, but by 1.30am he was asleep, his head in the lap of the girl whose boyfriend, Stephen Temperton, was killed in a July car crash.
Ricky will appear in Napier Court on October 17, charged with unnecessary exhibition of speed. The charge carries a penalty of a fine and six months' disqualification from driving. Ricky's car has been impounded for 28 days.