Banned wagon
A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit LEGISLATORS are a little like wash- ing-machine salesmen: they would always rather be selling us a new model than be bothering about the one they sold us last year. Time and again gleaming new laws are wheeled out on display when a better solution might lie in enforcing those laws already on the statute book.
The latest piece of legislation in the government's showroom is a proposed ban on 17-year-old drivers. In future, motorists would have to be 18 and to have held a provisional licence for a year before venturing on to the roads by themselves. The justification seems straightforward enough: male drivers aged between 17 and 19, statistics reveal, are ten times more likely to have a fatal accident than are those aged between 35 and 54.
But why should a blanket ban on 17- year-olds — many of whom live and work in areas where there is little pub- lic transport — have any effect when murderous drivers of all ages are able to escape punishment, thanks to lax enforcement of existing laws? Even on the rare occasions when they are caught, reckless drivers are able to shrug off standard £40 fines as merely another motoring expense.
Last month 23-year-old Andrew Deveson was jailed for five years after driving his high-powered Ford into the back of a Vauxhall Nova at 100 mph and killing its female driver. Why Mr Deveson had been allowed the chance to cause the accident surprised many people: he already had a string of motoring convictions going back to the age of 12, and had seven times been caught driving while disqualified.
The evidence would suggest that Deveson should never be allowed near a car again, yet he will receive his licence back the day his sentence expires in five years' time. Officially, he will then be deemed to be less of a risk than a careful 17-year-old girl pottering along to her supermarket job in a Mini.
Ross Clark
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