Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 18, 2003


ABUSER PAYS FOR ROAD TOLL


IN OUR society, a driver's licence is one of the significant markers of growing up. You cannot yet vote or legally drink alcohol but in South Australia you can drive a car. I do not know how 16 came to be the age for being allowed to drive here when it was 18 in Victoria. Perhaps it makes no difference behind the wheel, maybe it does, although there certainly seems to be a difference in maturity between an 18 year old and a 16 year old, both physically and mentally. Recent headlines have highlighted the disproportionate number of young lives lost on our roads, especially teenage men. To appreciate the tragedy of such deaths, go and spend a Saturday night amid the trauma at the RAH, listening to a sobbing mother by her son's bed begging him not to die. And he dies. So it goes, and will continue that way until young males are required to take hormone pills to suppress their testosterone levels. It may also reduce the illegitimate birthrate. The surging testerone makes them do it. They think they are bullet proof. They hoon around in cars and turn the roads into rutting grounds, testing themselves, showing off to their mates. They are not fully in control. On any weekday morning between 7am and 7.30am, hormone-fuelled young factory workers, wearing black beanies and lying almost flat in the driver's seat, shoot red lights and swerve aggressively from one lane to another. I tremble. Then again, between 8.30am and 9am, young women, sitting bolt upright at the wheel with no peripheral vision whatever, blindly switch lanes and speed through the same red lights. A surge of oestrogen? More trembling. What to do? The whole issue is too complicated for knee-jerk solutions and buck-passing but let's keep it simple for a moment. Under the current system, people who pass the driving test at 16 do not have to sit it again until they reach 70, no matter how many times they ``lose'' their licence in the meantime. I believe anyone who ``loses'' his or her licence for whatever reason should be made to sit the driver's test again. Their licence is cancelled not suspended. Personally, I worry more about truckies than I do about young drivers. Once upon a time, trucks were slow and held up everyone. Now they thunder down the road, tailgating and trying to overpass as if their monster, 36-wheel B-double rigs were zippy little family cars. Nearly one in four truckies killed in accidents tests positive to stimulant drugs - six times more than other driver fatalities - and fatal accidents involving trucks account for about 20 per cent of the national road toll. Were it up to me, the police would also be empowered to take saliva samples from truckies at breathalyser stations. Any driver who returned a positive swab for amphetamines would lose his/her licence for at least a year and the truck would be temporarily deregistered to exact a heavy commercial penalty on the owner as well. Better to be wired on testosterone than on amphetamines, and catch public transport.