Kerre Woodham: Driving mother round the bend

Visiting British traffic safety expert Kate McMahon caused a ruckus this week when she said that New Zealand should raise the driving age if the country wanted to get serious about reducing accidents on the road.

Outraged New Zealanders spluttered that McMahon should go back to her own country and tell her own people what to do. Circumstances in New Zealand were different, they said, and this expert, a term often used as a pejorative, had no understanding of the situation here.

What McMahon does understand is that traffic accidents are the leading cause of death in the 15 to 24-year-old age range, and she, along with the rest of the adult population, would like to see that figure reduced. McMahon claims, and in many cases she's right, that 15-year-olds are children, very immature and lacking the judgement and perception that enable them to be good drivers. Just as an aside, perhaps that same lack of judgement and perception that makes so many kids accident statistics is also behind the other main cause of death for young people - death through "intentional self-harm".

When you're older and a little wiser and you've ridden life's highs and troughs, you know that things are cyclical. Good times follow bad, there's always another option. But if you lack that perception, suicide becomes a dramatic full stop, rather than the comma, the pause, that you need. However, I digress.

Not all 15-year-olds are created equal, and surely here's where good parenting comes in. Parents know their teenagers better than the Government does.

You are legally able to begin the process of getting your licence at the age of 15, but that doesn't make it compulsory to do so. I didn't get my licence until I was 19 and only then because I was threatened with losing my job at Radio New Zealand if I didn't. My daughter delayed getting her licence too, because a) drivers in Auckland are mad and she wanted to put off for as long as possible joining the melee, and b) because Kerre's Kut-throat Kabs operates day and night, 24-7, from Remuera to Piha and all points in between and costs absolutely nothing. She knew and I knew that she wasn't ready to drive at 15, and I sure as hell wasn't ready to teach her.

She enrolled for lessons through a driving school that taught her the basics of driving, but there was a real problem finding someone who could ride along with her to give her the experience she needed for the next progression.

She flatly refused to drive with me after one particularly hair-raising ride when I was convinced she was about to drive into a row of parked cars and shrieked and screamed and yelled at her until she got out of the car, walked home and told me she would never, ever drive with me again.

What do you do when you're a control freak who's reluctant to let anyone take control of the wheel, least of all your daughter? There's something unnatural about teaching your own child to drive. I offered to sit in the passenger's seat, blindfolded and gagged - if I can't see what she's doing, then I'm less likely to panic - but as she pointed out, this rather negated the reason for me being there.

Thank heavens for step-parents and her older friends with full licences. They have that one degree of separation that means co-driving is not such a fraught experience.

For most kids, 15 is too young to be behind the wheel of a car. Kate McMahon is right on that count. But if parents made honest evaluations of their children's personalities and abilities, and if kids accepted that with every right comes a set of responsibilities, then the Government wouldn't need to legislate. And that doesn't just apply to driving.