There was an horrific accident on the notoriously bad Oxford to Banbury road which recently came to court in Oxford. A 19 year old, driving without a license or insurance, in a borrowed car at 80mph on a 50mph stretch of road, hurrying, ironically, to get to court to answer other charges killed a young recently qualified doctor coming the other way as he overtook on a blind brow of a hill.

The mother's Witness Impact Statement moved the judge in the case to tears last week and now the Oxford Mail reports that she backs calls from a road safety group (I think it might have been RoSPA as I'm sure I saw something on TV last week about it) that young people should have lessons for at least a year before they are allowed out on the road alone in a car: Mums Backing For Road Plan.

Why? Why is a year a magic arbitrary number? Why, in fact, is 17 a magic arbitrary age for driving. Well, 18 now. Yet in the US it's still 15 isn't it? The most car conscious country on earth. Now, in fact, that it is 18 here, what will a year achieve? Well, it will prevent anyone from getting a job more than a bus ride away I guess.

Does everyone even have to take formal lessons from an accredited instructor nowadays? I know when I was at school and many of my friends were farmers, the fact that they could drive the old banger around the fields in the holidays meant they were quite good drivers by the time some of them had left prep school at 13! I don't suppose they took any lessons from an accredited instructor unless they found they failed their first attempt at a test and needed to know why and what to fix.

Now, our sympathies do lie with Mrs Davidson, and yes, using the available penalties when something like this happens might well act as a deterrent - this boy was a reckless criminal who probably would not have given any more of a damn had he held a license, but fourteen years inside might have made him think. But penalising all young adults who just want to get on with what the rest of us take for granted is utter knee-jerk nonsense.

If you want some additional check, perhaps you could have a second test for everyone after a year of having passed their first test. To make sure they haven't slipped into bad habits and so on. But there again, I don't see many teenagers hogging the middle and outer lanes of the motorway that regularly.

UPDATE: I've just seen the young doctor's fiance on TV tonight in Oxford campaigning for the crime of "death by dangerous driving" to be dropped and for all such incidents to be classed as "Manslaughter". I seem to remember this was argued at the time the then new crime was enacted, and I can't quite remember the arguments against, but I agree with him.

Why should killing someone with a car, recklessly, be prejudged as somehow less blameworthy or bad as anything else? It gives the trial more flexibility. Whilst there is, I think, no minimum if it is proven to have been a tragic unforseen accident, you can be put away for life for more egregious incidents.