Limit power of teen cars

I found it hard to understand how a car salesman could morally sell such a powerful machine to a teenager.

SPEED is exhilarating - especially when you are young. But the consequences can be devastating for families - with the results often played out in our court system. Raised behind the wheel of midget cars racing around the track at Auckland's Waikaraka Park, we were taught there was a place for racing - on the track.

We never dreamed of racing on the streets - anyway the cars weren't as powerful back then. Maximum speed - was lucky to reach 100km/h in the old Triumph Herald I drove. Times have changed and so has the power of our vehicles.

Having two sons who are Holden crazy I held my breath every time they went out with their mates - especially my eldest son who bought his first Holden Executive as a 17-year-old.

Working as a dairy farmer, earning a good wage, he walked into a car sale yard and walked out with this powerful machine, much to my dismay and terror.

I found it hard to understand how a car salesman could morally sell such a powerful machine to a teenager. But all I could do was warn my young man of the dangers.

Two months later those warning bells in my head became a nightmare.

My son had been boy racing with a mate and lost control, crashing through a barrier, flying across a ditch between a large strainer post and a huge rock taller than myself and landing embedded in a 3m-high hurricane wire security fence. Luckily nobody was hurt apart from an ego.

The punishment was his car locked in the garage until he could pay for the repairs. I refused to let him claim insurance, warning I would tell them he was boy racing. He hated driving his sister's tiny Mazda hatchback to work.

It took him six months to get his beautiful car repaired and back on the road and I promptly made him sell it, fearful my son would kill himself or someone else.

But for me this incident has always raised the question about young drivers being permitted to drive such powerful machines.

Judge Jill Moss put it into perspective for me last week in court when a teenager was sentenced for driving at 154km/h. She said cars become weapons and you won't survive if you hit something.

Maybe it's time we looked at a graduated system like they have with motorcycles. I know if my son was driving a 1600cc rating engine it wouldn't have been such fun driving at top speed.