Source: The Sydney Morning Herald [Letters to the Editor]

The outpouring of shock and grief at the deaths of four young men in northern NSW reminds us that we are still idling in the slow lane when it comes to the massive over-representation of young people in major motor vehicle trauma.

The cars we drive are all capable of doing the damage seen near Byron Bay this week — the car was just an ordinary Commodore. If we crash at greater than 80kmh we will be very lucky to survive major trauma. This fact is backed up by leading medicos, who see the results every day.

On average, five people die on Australian roads every day. For every death, 11 or 12 are maimed. Some never recover and end up in nursing homes or other full-time care.

The cost is more than $40 million daily. Compare this with the cost of air accidents, which is $100 million a year.

Why is it that we are inured to such trauma yet become so emotional when a multiple fatality involving young people occurs and the media jumps on the bandwagon for a few days? The media should get fair dinkum and advocate change to our driving and educational priorities. The public needs to realise this happens every week; they may not always be multiple deaths but the results for the families and friends are just as devastating.

Speed, alcohol, lack of seatbelts and fatigue are not always the cause. We need to address inexperience, overconfidence, intentional risk taking and negative peer pressure. When the idea of curfews and passenger limits was mooted, the State Government had an opportunity to explain to the young why these initiatives would save lives. But it didn't have the political will to make the hard decisions.

We know that the majority of serious crashes involving young people occur on Friday and Saturday nights. Why not, for the first six months, as they gain vital experience, ask them to leave the car at home? Those who need the car, shiftworkers, for example, could be issued with a permit. Parents need to take some responsibility here and agree to do what they had been doing until then: pick them up, drop them off, pay for a taxi.

For the same six months, let's prevent them from carrying passengers.

A Johns Hopkins University study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the chance of a 17-year-old driver dying in a crash increases 48 per cent if they have one passenger, 158 per cent with two passengers and 207 per cent for three or more passengers. This is an obvious reason to look at passenger restrictions in the early part of their driving career.

Frank Bottomley Batemans Bay