Kids and cars

[GoSeigen]

Aaaaarghhh!

What do you do when your university-age son with a provisional licence takes your car without your knowledge -- to help with a job and just around the block -- and then damages it?

Probably a common occurrence for some but our kids are usually sensible so we're in relatively new territory!


GS

[kempiejon]

Look to the lessons you were able to impart when they were younger and realise young people's brains are still immature until later 20s.
Many young lads engage in risky/foolish activities around this stage it's hard wired/bred. Usually they'll leave the behaviour behind. Keep an eye out in case you've got a wrong 'un who doesn't shake it off as they finish development.

Could have been much worse. No one hurt, a teachable moment as I like to say.

[didds]

if he had a provisional licence - who was the licenced driver with him?

was he insured to drive it? (with a suitable driver with him of course)

[the0ni0nking]

I am assuming he took the car on his own and has presumably just damaged the car (as opposed to anyone or anything else).

So from the OPs perspective, there won't be an insurance claim because the insurance wouldn't be valid.

It's difficult to know if a financial penalty would work or not - if they are a student then hitting their finances probably isn't particularly helpful. If they are working then you could look to re-coup the costs of the repair etc.

I'd say the important thing for them to realise is that actions have consequences. I wouldn't be getting any outside agency involved but clearly that could be a potential bargaining chip if there is a lack of contrition.

[Lootman]

Be careful. The daughter of a friend of my wife's took out their car whilst on a provisional license. No adult driver with her of course.

No accident but she got stopped by a cop. And the end result was that the parent was ticketed for allowing this to happen. Specifically it was allowing the operation of an uninsured vehicle.

[88V8]

Be careful. The daughter of a friend of my wife's took out their car whilst on a provisional license. No adult driver with her of course.
No accident but she got stopped by a cop. And the end result was that the parent was ticketed for allowing this to happen. Specifically it was allowing the operation of an uninsured vehicle.

The offence is known as Permit No Insurance.
In this case the OP was unaware so that particular offence has not been committed.

Hopefully if any third party was involved he can pay them off without the authorities becoming engaged.

Damage... just scraped, or mangled? As to consequences for the son, if he has the means to pay for the damage then I would say that that should be required. Presumably he will be expecting the bank of Dad to subsidise him at uni, in which case I would deduct the cost from his stipend. Whatever, there should be a penalty/cost. He could have been banned from driving and fined, or run someone down and be in serious trouble, so he should not be allowed to regard it as trivial.

All this is bleedin' obvious and well known to the OP... dunno what else to say, really.

Not everyone who goes to university is mature and sensible all the time.

V8

[GoSeigen]

Thanks for the sympathy everyone!

I'm on a trip abroad leaving the missus in charge and this came on top of half a dozen other small problems that have piled a lot on her plate...

He's managed to break the back window of the car AND puncture a tyre both of which will need replacing. So small in the scheme of things and thankfully not worse this time. To be fair he was mortified and offered to pay for the damage. I don't deal well with these things, I find them very stressful.



kempiejon: yeah despite being a sensible lad I also did plenty of dumb/regrettable things at that age. Tried to shield my parents from them in general but I 'm sure I gave them stuff to worry about sometimes...

didds: yep, no-one with him. Fortunately he was only on public roads for all of 400m, the damage occurred on our property. He'll learn from it but I'd say in many ways his character is too conforming, it would be a shame if this made him even more conservative. Part of me wished he'd got away his minor indiscretion as his intentions were good...

the0ni0nking: exactly my thoughts throughout. He was very contrite and mortified and came to me immediately. But as I said it probably stressed me out as much as him!

Lootman: he's a bright kid, I don't think the possible consequences will be lost on him.

V8: Yes, agree. Regards the cost, that's a difficult one. As with many parents we have done everything possible to provide for our kids and pay both their university fees and living expenses. One feels that if he gave us the money we'd just be giving it back in a few weeks' time! He's been helping his mum out while I'm away, probably getting him to source replacement parts and arrange repairs will give him an insight into the extra hassle that has resulted.


GS
EDIT: Should add he's done a lot of driving and about to take his test so he probably wasn't a greater danger behind the wheel than the average newly qualified driver. He just got unlucky while in charge of a car without permission or supervision and without a licence!

[Gerry557]

Hopefully its something that will just cost you some money.

If the police had been involved he would be looking at TWOC, no insurance etc. So fines and points on his licence. This would have longer term increased costs of motoring going forward.

I would make them watch a few episodes of Police Camera Action, Traffic Cops etc. The location of car keys would be another assessment I would make. Then make him walk to uni carrying all his stuff unless he gets a job and pays you back

[Adamski]

Sounds like lessons learned and no one hurt. That's the important thing. Had a school friend killed in a car accident at aged 17. at 17-18 lot drive like lunatics. Hence why insurance so high.

[DrFfybes]

Sounds like lessons learned and no one hurt. That's the important thing. Had a school friend killed in a car accident at aged 17. at 17-18 lot drive like lunatics. Hence why insurance so high.

Vehicle accidents are still the biggest cause of teenage/adolescent death and injury in the developed world and about a quarter of collisions involve drivers under 25 (who apparently only do 7% of the total mileage).

Not helped by adolescent influences, in our day it was Burt Reynolds and the Dukes of Hazzard, where major crashes resulted in slightly dazed drivers emerging unscathed. These days I gather video games have a similar skewing of the actual consequence of crashing a car.

Paul

[didds]

The offence is known as Permit No Insurance.
In this case the OP was unaware so that particular offence has not been committed.

So TWOCing instead! Which i suspect carries (for the TWOCer) a far greater penalty...

[stevensfo]

At the tender age of c.21, I had my parents' place to myself for a few weeks over summer and invited my girlfriend to visit.

I'd had quite a few driving lessons so considered myself an expert driver. Haha! No way!

I drove my mum's big car to pick her up from the station and did so with my heart going at light speed and blood pressure off the scale.

On the way back, I was showing off and turned into our road too fast, doing a typical very loud tyre screech, curing my constipation and getting religion!

I honestly can't remember how she got back to the station, but I think we walked.

Steve

PS It may be a modern thing, cos our eldest has scraped or dented every car he's driven!

[bungeejumper]

PS It may be a modern thing, cos our eldest has scraped or dented every car he's driven!

After our daughters had passed their respective driving tests (mid 1990s), I bought each of them an oldish Peugeot 205. (Basic, spannerable, but still quite stylish enough to have a bit of street cred.)

They both bent them. One tramlined against a Mercedes while exiting from a parking space (no damage to the Merc, fortunately), and the other encountered an oncoming lamp-post that just refused to give way. (Ouch, that one cost me more to fix.) They both cried bitter tears, and learned that they weren't superhuman, and they both grew into very good safe drivers. In fact I don't think either of them has had a shunt in the intervening thirty years. Job done!

BJ

[AWOL]

Sounds like lessons learned and no one hurt. That's the important thing. Had a school friend killed in a car accident at aged 17. at 17-18 lot drive like lunatics. Hence why insurance so high.

Vehicle accidents are still the biggest cause of teenage/adolescent death and injury in the developed world and about a quarter of collisions involve drivers under 25 (who apparently only do 7% of the total mileage).

Not helped by adolescent influences, in our day it was Burt Reynolds and the Dukes of Hazzard, where major crashes resulted in slightly dazed drivers emerging unscathed. These days I gather video games have a similar skewing of the actual consequence of crashing a car.

Paul

My dad was a policeman and discouraged driving lessons as he "had seen too many young men spread across the road after crashing a car" so neither my brother nor I learned to drive until later on. I was 27 when I passed my test. Was he right? I don't know but unlike one of my friends' son and his friends at least I am here.

[bluedonkey]

Vehicle accidents are still the biggest cause of teenage/adolescent death and injury in the developed world and about a quarter of collisions involve drivers under 25 (who apparently only do 7% of the total mileage).

Not helped by adolescent influences, in our day it was Burt Reynolds and the Dukes of Hazzard, where major crashes resulted in slightly dazed drivers emerging unscathed. These days I gather video games have a similar skewing of the actual consequence of crashing a car.

Paul

My dad was a policeman and discouraged driving lessons as he "had seen too many young men spread across the road after crashing a car" so neither my brother nor I learned to drive until later on. I was 27 when I passed my test. Was he right? I don't know but unlike one of my friends' son and his friends at least I am here.

This was exactly my wife's view. Young men and cars are a potent mix. Our son didn't learn to drive until his mid-20s, luckily we lived in London and so getting around without use of a car wasn't a problem. As is often the case, London's an exception to most of the UK.

[the0ni0nking]

My dad was a policeman and discouraged driving lessons as he "had seen too many young men spread across the road after crashing a car" so neither my brother nor I learned to drive until later on. I was 27 when I passed my test. Was he right? I don't know but unlike one of my friends' son and his friends at least I am here.

This was exactly my wife's view. Young men and cars are a potent mix. Our son didn't learn to drive until his mid-20s, luckily we lived in London and so getting around without use of a car wasn't a problem. As is often the case, London's an exception to most of the UK.

One interesting point in this - I've probably driven more mileage in cars owned by my parents than any other. (I have never owned a car personally but did have a period of having a car provided by work).

I've also never crashed my parents car - from either a minor prang to anything more substantial. I've crashed work cars twice - once into the back of another car in traffic and the other into a lamp-post when a wheel blew out and I wasn't able to regain control.

So while I've hardly had a litany of crashes, they've never been in my parents car. Maybe subliminally, I always concentrated more when the person/people I'd have to explain any incident to would have been my parents as opposed to the work insurers. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I ever told my parents of the two work incidents.

The one thing they did get to find out when I got done for speeding in their car as it was sent to their house - however, it was on a specific road in Leeds where the speed drops from 40mph to 30mph without obvious signage and I was clocked at 35mph (IIRC). It also helped that as it turned out, my dad had been fined for speeding on that road too just a few months before!

[GoSeigen]

As this thread has revived itself, a quick update.

This issue was a disaster in the end from my perspective. As I was in the UK and my wife abroad with my son, I left it mostly in her hands to "have the conversation". Unfortunately within a few days my son became embroiled in some kind of messy relationship crisis with a distance relationship he'd been having. I don't know exactly what was happening but he ended up simply not talking to his mother for two weeks. She thought he was angry with her; he denies that. I urged him by text to make sure he talked to her and cleared the air before returning to the UK. He didn't respond to me. So when he returned and walked through the door here I had no idea how he felt about anything -- his trip abroad, the time he'd had with his mother, the problem with his ex, the car issue. Certainly he left sorting out the car to his mother -- she had to source the parts and take it to be fixed.

So he walks in the door and I'm sitting there with my two daughters and he literally said nothing to us. He waked into the kitchen and started rearranging everything, washing our dishes from lunch etc, like he was marking his territory. The next few days were really fraught too, he was quite rude to me, which I reacted to and on one occasion he ended up smashing a saucepan and stormed out the door (again in front of both sisters and me). He told his mother later he'd considered walking in front of a car but went to see a friend instead.

Since then there is an uneasy truce but I can't help but feel the very good relationship I had previously with my son has ruptured in a way that I simply cannot understand. We've been living apart except for holidays for some four years, before living together again from last Summer so clearly he will have changed in ways perhaps my wife and I didn't perceive. But it's been very discomfiting to me and a source of sadness and pain.


Going out for dinner now with my girls. My son has pretty much ignored our arrangements, though the meal was ostensibly to celebrate his birthday.



GS

[bluedonkey]

That's so sad. It's the sort of situation that can gnaw away at you. Young people can go off the rails before finding their equilibrium. I guess you just have to watch out that he isn't doing anything dangerous for himself and hope he eventually matures.

[rhys]

GoSeigen,

My boys are 16 & 13. The elder can be hard work, especially towards my wife.

All I can suggest is that you keep on giving your son unconditional love. Agree redline boundaries with your wife, and don't allow him past those.

With time, one hopes that his behaviour will improve.

Re motoring:
When I was 26, I overturned a 205 GTi on a corner. THe car slid on its roof, and could easily have collided with a large oak tree. As it was I was hardly injured - just a cut to my forehead, which my dad sutured before he took me home. The car (just 16k miles) was destroyed. I kept a video tape of the wreck at the garage it was towed to. I intend to show this to my boys once they pass their test, as a warning to what can go wrong, since they perceive me as risk averse.

[AWOL]

He told his mother later he'd considered walking in front of a car but went to see a friend instead.
<EDIT>
Going out for dinner now with my girls. My son has pretty much ignored our arrangements, though the meal was ostensibly to celebrate his birthday.

I am extremely worried by the update on this. I don't think I have any words of wisdom but I think some sort of calm environment where communication is possible is essential. We are all different, a walk on the hills or a corner table in a bar are two environments that depending on the circumstances would work for me. Isolation and pressure are the two things that wouldn't help although some space and time to think is necessary. I really hope you find a way to gently bridge the gulf in something that looks like a wider crisis rather than a traumatic incident.