Should young drivers be allowed to drive cars that have NO seatbelts?

System

You win the prize and I was only 18 at the time

Imp

I drove a 1967 car as my normal car for a couple of years. I was fully aware that if I crashed, I died, and drove accordingly.

Aretnap

We don't have graduated licences in Britain and anyone with a full licence can drive any road legal car. There is certainly a body of opinion which says that this should change, but if it did it's likely that the priority would be to impose restrictions on young/inexperienced drivers driving powerful cars, driving at night or carrying large numbers of passengers, all of which are implicated in far more death and injury than the tiny number of young drivers who might be driving forty-odd year old cars with no seatbelts.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

There are plenty of old cars around that could give you a serious injury in a crash, seat belt or not.

I think that it was really only in the 90s that crash protection really got taken seriously in the mass market, and the cars we drive today are seriously improved from even 20 years ago. Go back 30 years or more and there are seriously scary problems with car design.

Why anyone would drive an original Mini except on a track day (on safety grounds as opposed to having to prop the gear lever up with your knee in 3rd)... things like neck snapping low seat backs, and half-hearted style attempts at head rests that still sit somewhere halfway up your back on later models, the complete lack of crumple zones so you get an engine in your lap in an accident, and so on.

In the 70s, the cars still didn't stop in a straight line - I remember an emergency stop in an Allegro and it was entirely random which direction the car went, so there is quite a good case for suggesting that classic cars should be reserved for track days and stuff like that, on the basis that they are actually a danger to other road users. That's the Victor Medrew in me though, most classic car drivers are so precious about their loves that they are not normally going to cause accidents and will also drive defensively.

As a student, I rode in some awful cars, like a classic Ford Anglia with remold cross-plies on the front and radials on the back, not so much understeer as no steer. Then again, at the same time a mate came into money and bought a Triumph Dolomite Sprint and crashed it due to be too busy trying to pull women rather than watching the road, so I am not sure that the car has that much to do with it!

photome

I never wore a seatbelt until I was forced to by law and even then resisted for a long time.

OP why do you see it as such an issue

We all used to be responsible for ourselves now it seems some want the state to look after us all

Norman_Castle

pogofish wrote: »

As well as no seatbelts, a large spike (or some other blatantly death-dealing device) should be affixed to the centre of the steering wheel for the first year or so for all young drivers.

That should encourage care/observation when driving like nothing else - and the rest, call it Natural Selection!

Removing all occupant safety aids and increasing insurance excesses to a minimum £1000 for all drivers would improve road safety very quickly. Drive like a moron, you get hurt.

londonTiger

dont know, are older drivers immune from getting the face shmashed after a collision?

Aretnap

Norman_Castle wrote: »

Removing all occupant safety aids and increasing insurance excesses to a minimum £1000 for all drivers would improve road safety very quickly. Drive like a moron, you get hurt.

That was the logic applied in the 50s and 60s when cars had very few safety features. Death rates were much higher than they were now, despite there being far fewer cars in the roads. The idea that removing safety aids would somehow make the roads safer is nonsense - not remotely borne out by the facts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reported_Road_Casualties_Great_Britain

RichardD1970

Norman_Castle wrote: »

Removing all occupant safety aids and increasing insurance excesses to a minimum £1000 for all drivers would improve road safety very quickly. Drive like a moron, you get hurt.

That's all very well, it might make you a better/safer driver, but you can't account for all the other idiots on the road who are going to crash into you.

RumRat

I doubt it's a problem at any level. Not understanding why the OP would suddenly find that something that's been law since 1983 is causing mass carnage on British roads.