A kid I know in year 11, just got his Ps w few weeks ago. He was pretty excited at getting out on the weekend in his VK Commodore his oldies had helped him buy. Tragically, it came to rest in a tree on Saturday night, killing him outright and seriously injuring his younger brother.
Obviously this is heartbreaking stuff, but if you are a parent with a teen, please don't let them out with a few weeks experience in shite weather driving an old car.
Might not appy to anyone here, but its another reminder that young drivers, crap weather, old cars, peer pressure and lack of experience is a killer mix.
The kid was not a hot head, in fact one of the quiet ones.
Sadly missed, but figure it's a message we can't pass on enough.
Loves a lolcat
Sorry to butt in, but I think this is a message for the teens too.
-Staggers.
STAGGERS AUTOMOTIVE - Heavy Vehicle Diesel Specialist
JB CUSTOMS & CLASSICS - Car Builders
2/53 Tradelink Drive, Browns Plains
No it's not because 'I'm not gunna crash'
Pay your debts, CxxT
yeah... a guy i went to school with met a tree a few years ago... i found out about it on christmas day... opened the paper and he was looking at me.
suffice to say that all my friends were in shock and upon going to see the tree i found one of the windscreen wipers.
i think every young driver has to understand how horrible it is... but i don't believe that they will, until they are standing there holding a windscreen wiper from the car of somebody they knew themselves 🙁
"Mr Writer, why don't you tell it like it is? Why don't you tell it like it REALLY is?" - stereophonics
some schools are helping the situation though.
my school had 2 hr periods on a day of the week for 5 weeks in yr 12, with officials from the local police, fire and rescue squad, ambos, some law official dude, and some schoolies advisor/planner or something...
and the fire and rescue squad especially gave a good run at the vulnerability of teens. alot of graphic pictures and stories of situations, and a demo of how they chop up a car to get someone out (Greatfully, some old bomb holden)
later that yr, the school also offered defense driving courses not just for Provisional drivers, but also learners.
They did a good job. Mind u, was a private school. Where u weren't suppose to drive to school, unless u got authorisation. Not sure what the state school system is like, do they do any of this stuff?
(ô_!_/ô) (ô_!_/ô)
69' baja: kombi box, thing spindles, irs, disc front, type 3 rear drums, 2 inch lift kit, 31x10 rears. 👍
New engine in process: 94mm p&bs, 74mm C/w chomol Crank, 35.5x39 SP heads, turbo. Wierd combo, hopeful torque monsta!
As a firefighter i have cut too many people out of cars. Whether you think you are a good driver or not there are unavoidable situations on the road that can present fatal results! Having the attitude of "it wont happen to me" isnt good enough. Sadly most of the drunk drivers out there arent the ones affected, but the families and friends of the innocent people they kill. Have cut too many "P" platers out of cars too, not just because they were dickheads, but becasue they were unable to handle or react to the situation they were presented with on the roads...
Ash x
1963 Single Cab Ute: "El Concreto"
1962 Baja Beetle: "Peanut"
1968 Porsche 912 SWB: "Pip"
1972 Kombi Snail: "The Snail"
2012 Skoda Octavia Scout: "Scout"
2016 Scirocco R: "Rocco"
What ever happened to just driving sedatley and 'parking' to enjoy the serenity.
i have lost a mate to a driving accident however i think saying that parents shouldnt let kids out in bad weather and old cars is a rediculous thing to ask.
most teenagers cant afford a new car and getting their license is a way of stating their 'freedom' so to speak.
now parents telling their kids not to go out at all cos its bad weather would only cause problems.
its more a message of DRIVE SAFE..
this happens to older people in the rain as well as the terrible 'p' platers most speak of,
Anthony
MISS_VDUB wrote:As a firefighter i have cut too many people out of cars. Whether you think you are a good driver or not there are unavoidable situations on the road that can present fatal results! Having the attitude of "it wont happen to me" isnt good enough. Sadly most of the drunk drivers out there arent the ones affected, but the families and friends of the innocent people they kill. Have cut too many "P" platers out of cars too, not just because they were dickheads, but becasue they were unable to handle or react to the situation they were presented with on the roads...
Ash x
I think I love you haha... not many people understand how horrible the aftermath is. They see it on the news and think "oh yeah... a car with a sheet on it"... They should consider themselves lucky that they never see what it truly looks like!
🙁"Mr Writer, why don't you tell it like it is? Why don't you tell it like it REALLY is?" - stereophonics
I have been cut out of a car, i was the passenger, what happened was the guy drivin was doin about 120kph and the back tyre blew out and instead of just easing off on the gas he hit the picks and the car veered off the road and rolled three times. My neck was severely sprained and i couldn't move, the firemen cut me out with the jaws of life and they were about three inches from my face scary shit. I'm all good now, bigger, stronger and better. This happened back in 92, and to this day i have not been in another accident, touch wood. Once again Defensive driving courses should be mandatory, i have done one and the skills taught are imbedded in your brain forever, remember people 2 -3 seconds gap between cars no matter what the speed, shame commodore drivers don't understand physics.
This is my Volkswagen, there are many like it, but this one is mine. Without me my Volkswagen is useless, without my Volkswagen, I am useless.
61 Karmann Ghia 2110cc type1 w Los Panchito's
66 Deluxe Beetle 2270 type 4
10 Subaru WRX Impreza
yeah, they don't. saw some dick head in a dunnydore yesterday evening burning out his tyres and flying forward in a busy carpark, people and a few kids around... idiot
Apparently u can dob these dophis's in though
(ô_!_/ô) (ô_!_/ô)
69' baja: kombi box, thing spindles, irs, disc front, type 3 rear drums, 2 inch lift kit, 31x10 rears. 👍
New engine in process: 94mm p&bs, 74mm C/w chomol Crank, 35.5x39 SP heads, turbo. Wierd combo, hopeful torque monsta!
A few years after I got my licence, I crashed a mate's Subaru. The situation was late friday night, dirt road out the back of Wiseman's Ferry. Basically I offered to drive coz the guy who owned the car's eye were getting tired. I wasn't driving like an idiot but I came round a downhill corner and lost the back end of the car. I tried to correct and keep the powerdown, which is what you do in a 2wd. However, the subaru was awd and I kept overcorrecting. Finally it got to the point where it was so sideways it clipped a tree and spun around launching off a sizable rock and spearing down the side of the steep mountain the road was on. After pushing a heap of sapplings over, it came to rest almost touching a large gum measuring 3 metres in circumference round the trunk. The guy who owned the car was a landscaper and had garden stakes in the back of the car which shot down between the front seats like javelins.
My brother and I both walked away. The car was written off from where it clipped the tree initially.
I see now, we could have been killed 4 ways;
1. clipping the wrong tree.
2. hitting the rock head on.
3. being speared by the garden stakes.
4. hitting the large gum properly.
This is not taking into account the possibility of rolling or anything else.
And this was a low speed accident. I'd estimate I was doing less than 60km/h when it all happened. We just go a bit sideways in the wrong place, and I was inexperienced.
I think every driver should have to do advanced training. Skid control. Emergency braking. Etc. Getting a driver's licence is too easy. Anyone can steer, what we need is people who can "drive" properly.
Let me tell you another story. A family I know well sent 3 sons off together in the family Volvo. The oldest son was driving. He lost control of the car, it rolled and his youngest brother died. They have never completely recovered. The eldest brother's life is a bit all over the place, and I think a lot of it can be traced back to that event. How could you live with the guilt?
🙁
i lost a good mate of mine to a crash with a tree aswell and it isnt the best thing to be going to a good mates funeral at the age of 18 it just absolutely sucks big time!! carrying a mates coffin isnt something i wanted to do at 18 i tell u that!!
it surely woke me and many of my mates up thats for sure!!
it aint just cool its aircool'd
kombi-kid. i have had to do that twice now, once at the age of 17 and once at the age of 18...i know what you mean.
Anthony
unfortunately the old "i got my Ps im god" thing i dont think will ever go away no matter how much we preach about it
instant idiots just add water will always exist and its not till they have an accidnt that most of them learn and even this isnt enough ususally
i will put my hand up and admit that i dont have my first superbug anymore because at the time power sliding out of a corner in the wet was fun till i lost control and a tree jumped out at me
i was just lucky i didnt pick my little brother up like i was supposed to at the time or the accident would have been alot worse
-Joel
As we have all suffered loss of friend or bloody good mates i feel i will add. It is neither the conditions or car, yes they attribute, lack of time on a parents behalf is becoming a common thing as with this fast paced world getting faster, how many of our old man's would've taken us out for " a driving lesson" and these always got better each time you went. Too much urban sprawl and lack of dirt are becoming all too familiar. Experience = being put into a semi controlled (only because the old mans there) disaster and then being told what to do. Time in equals time out time & time again. Put the kids in the dirt in a car and show them something they are not going to learn, until it is too late.
I offer my sympathy to crewcabconnection and the family more immediately as it wasnt too long ago my good mate was a victim of the old "i just didnt look, I didn't see him".
Keep the steering and the propulsion seperate . Still a Kombi...
It's all good, until it's bad, i suppose
hear hear...tell it like it is.... I've had two nasty bike accidents, with long slow, painfull recoveries that will continue to affect me for the rest of my life....its just gotta be said... I hate telling young riders and drivers, cos I hate to sound all patronising, but I try to put it back on me, and tell them all the things I could have done to avoid the accidents.... so keep talking about it... till the awareness sinks in.... cheers
......-----......
....|:kiss |.....
..(o(_|_)o)......
....U......U.......
Iwish4aSynchro wrote:It is neither the conditions or car, yes they attribute, lack of time on a parents behalf is becoming a common thing as with this fast paced world getting faster, how many of our old man's would've taken us out for " a driving lesson" and these always got better each time you went. Too much urban sprawl and lack of dirt are becoming all too familiar. Experience = being put into a semi controlled (only because the old mans there) disaster and then being told what to do. Time in equals time out time & time again. Put the kids in the dirt in a car and show them something they are not going to learn, until it is too late.
I'm in between both ends of this situation at the moment, being young enough to remember the driving lessons I did with the old man, and "old" enough to have a 10 year old son which is starting to scare me with driving age approaching. I know its 6-8 years but time flies.
I'm not sure if more seat time with the old man going round in the 'burbs would have helped my skills. Sure he taught me all he could but after all its not like you're going to go for a hoon with the old man and be shown how to do it. Well I didn't anyway. So you get in the car on your own and do something stupid, and who knows how its going to turn out? Luckily for me I guess I didn't do anything too dumb, but a few times it could have gone pear shaped.
I don't know the answer, but I do agree with advanced driving courses. Show new drivers what it feels like to lose control in a "controlled environment" and how to recover, and maybe they won't do it on the roads with a car full of mates.
A lifetime of commonsense is about all I can try and offer my boys, then give them the lessons and maybe some advanced courses. Even then all you can do is hope for the best. I also reckon that if I help him build his first car rather than just buying one he might have some respect for it, you know, take care of the car = take care of yourself. 3 Kids, I'm gonna be busy building cars.
Condolences to anyone affected by road deaths, its a nasty way to go, especially when a teenager is involved. No parent should have to bury their kids, its meant to be the other way around.
1954 Oval long term project going nowhere
1958 Beetle drag car project
1959 Beetle project I need to sell one day
1969 Squareback
All i have is to say it to drive slower and more carefully! Better to get there in one peice than not at all..
I'm 20 and have had two accidents myself.. one major.. wrote off my '87 corolla and another person's mazda.. i only had my car for a fortnight and didn't have insurance.. so i'm paying back $12,000 in total. Lesson learned!
That said, Car crashes, people being killed.. is just a way of life.. its always going to be there. Unless we build a perfect car that runs on rails... but then where would the thrill of driving be without the danger?
Oh, and i think that video games have thier part in driver education.. provided they are realistic ones.
Games such as Gran Turismo give a fairly realistic feeling of a car loosing control and how to control it.. being a car and computer nut i've played this game quite alot.. and i feel it has actually increased my driving skill.. back when i first got my P plates and i had a beat up old '69 Beetle.. i lost control in the wet.. so i did what i would do in the game.. turn into it and apply slight throttle.. i did so.. and hey presto! It worked!
The downside to this is ofcourse games like the Need For Speed series.. it says it in the title really.. its all about going fast.. and the faster you go.. the better you are.. and the cars handle VERY unrealistically.. too many kids play these kinda games and think their real car can take a hairpin at 200km/h....
I had a pretty serious incident when I was 16. Took mums car to TAFE unlicenced, on the way back doing 100 in a 60 zone, all set to cut a bend but then a kombi came along the other way. I swerved, went through a fence, over a tree and came to rest on another tree. No injuries, just expense. Could have hit kombi head on, or a power pole, or the tree could have been bigger, or there could have been kids in the front yard.
Just spoke to my bro who's a music teacher in a country town not far from Sydney. One of their yr12s was on his way to maccas yesterday when he lost control of his car on a back street and hit a tree. Seems he wasn't even driving stupidly. He died of his injuries today. He is the only child of a single mum and a nice kid.
When will this end. 🙁
You might like to pray for his mum,
And also his schoolmates, who have to sit their HSC very soon.
jo_tas wrote:Oh, and i think that video games have thier part in driver education.. provided they are realistic ones.
Games such as Gran Turismo give a fairly realistic feeling of a car loosing control and how to control it.. being a car and computer nut i've played this game quite alot.. and i feel it has actually increased my driving skill..
I agree! played it for years, and the loosing control part, and gaining control, + the rally with the wheels slipping and trying to get it back together, it does give u a bit. Not exactly as good as say doing it in a defense course, but certainly keeps ya away from being clueless.
Neva had to use the skills learnt in real life though... yet. Lucky i haven't been in that situation.
(ô_!_/ô) (ô_!_/ô)
69' baja: kombi box, thing spindles, irs, disc front, type 3 rear drums, 2 inch lift kit, 31x10 rears. 👍
New engine in process: 94mm p&bs, 74mm C/w chomol Crank, 35.5x39 SP heads, turbo. Wierd combo, hopeful torque monsta!
It's a tragedy that these kids are dying coz they are not properly trained. Want to train yourself and your kids to drive more safely and control a car better? Come to this.
http://forums.aussieveedubbers.com/viewtopic.php?tid=55732&page=1#pid534523
$30 for adults, $15 for juniors (12-17)yo. Time to enter now. We've had 2 kids die in two weeks. Let's not be the next statistic.
Sadly wisdom and experience is something you have to develop, and even then sheer bad luck can defeat that. There's no good way to put an old head on young shoulders.
I've been riding bikes close to 20 years or so now, lost a lot of friends, have had a few horrific injuries myself, some my fault, some not.
Between the start of last December and mid January I lost three of my closest friends in seperate bike accidents, none of them being overtly silly or speeding, just sheer bad luck. I think it's almost harder to deal with when you know they wern't playing silly buggers 🙁
But as for young people, I don't know, not sure there is an answer, even the sedate ones might get a bad roll of the dice, or suffer a momentary lapse of reason, guess it's a case of hoping they dont run out of talent before they amass some experience 🙁
Who Dares Bins
i dont reckon racing simulator games improve driver skill :o
to many ppl think they can get behind the wheel of a car and drive just as well as they do on nd4spd and GT
theres a very HUGE difference in controlling a car with a controller and the real thing and too many ppl forget this
on the subject of Gran Turismo 4 has anyone noticed that there is no power differnce at all between the 68 1500 karmann ghia and the split window 1100 beetle :duh
-Joel
we brought my partners kids up on small 50 - 80cc motorcross bikes in the country taught them how to brake skid go round corners and fall off, my partners daughter's first car was an old volvo, no power steering, heavy as a tank 4 cyclinder not much power, the boy drove an old holden, now both in their 30's they have turned out to be fairly good sensible drivers.
I dunno about the simulator question, have oftentimes pondered that myself, I used to use MS Flight Sim to practice circuits when I was doing my PPL, and I've had 2 hrs flying the C130J sim at RAAF Richmond, I doubt car simulators can make you a driving god, but they may have some flow on benefit. I was visiting Melb around Easter when I was on a 2 week bike tour around SA/VIC/NSW and I went to a H.A.R.T open day where they were demonstrating a bike simulator they were using for training.
Who Dares Bins
I have long list of woeful stories. They are all dear and some gruesome and individual. I could easily list ten involving motor vehicles (Bike and Cars) and three more involving suicide and one where my foster brother shot and killed my other foster brother in jealous rage fuelled by drugs.
Suffice to say I have 3 sons and my plan is this:
* Spend the time developing a caring / sharing relationship built on honesty and trust,
* Each of us when the time comes will do driver training to an advanced level including avoidance and car maintenance and handling techniques,
* The car will be their own that they have worked for and built themselves over a long period of time,
* Whilst they live under my roof they live by my rules and accept the consequences of their actions as we as parents decide.
Good driving doesn’t start when they go for their learners, it start by you modelling the appropriate driving behaviours for their youngest age, by explaining how to drive safely and explaining in detail if this happens now what will happen next. Visiting accident locations and retracing the accident itself and visiting a funeral whilst they are undertaking their licence.
I strongly believe that although our school do try to do the best by our kids they don't have enough funding and time to really cut the road toll. They have the people and they best position to make a significant difference but its cheaper to install lights, reflectors and add campaigns after the fact than be preventative.
We only need to change the driving habits of one generation for successive generations to improve. Kids need locations to cut lose, do burnouts, spin out, slide and throw their car around but they are too far and few between. Instead country roads, back paddocks and car parks is where they learn what there car is and isn't capable often with devastating effect.
[ Edited on 15-9-2006 by The_Bronze. ]
Bronze.
Rathmines, Lake Macquarie, NSW.
DUB74L wrote:i dont reckon racing simulator games improve driver skill :o
to many ppl think they can get behind the wheel of a car and drive just as well as they do on nd4spd and GT
theres a very HUGE difference in controlling a car with a controller and the real thing and too many ppl forget this
As i said above.. it depends on the game... some are more realistic than other.. GT is realistic (well, fairly) need for speed is NOT.
I'm not saying if you can drive fast in gran turismo you can safely do it on the road.. but it does teach you how a car would react to a given situation.
on the subject of Gran Turismo 4 has anyone noticed that there is no power differnce at all between the 68 1500 karmann ghia and the split window 1100 beetle :duh
-Joel
Umm.. what are you on?
I was just playing it today.. there is a considerable difference.. the 1100 beetle has 25hp i think.. and the 1500 Karmann has 55hp.. and you can put a turbo on it! :kiss
