A young person’s brain is not fully matured until the age of 25. The
prefrontal cortex manages executive functions such as impulse control
and weighing consequences but may not do a great job of it for
teenagers. If you are faced with a teen driver who is
consistently making bad choices, what do you do?
This is a serious consideration as the BC Injury Research and Prevention
Unit says that motor vehicle collisions are one of the leading causes
of unintentional injury and death across all ages in BC.
The stage is set by parents long before the child learns to drive. As
with many things in life, our children tend to follow our example. As I
discussed in Perpetuating Mediocrity, some parents are ill equipped to
teach a new driver.
The Graduated Licensing Program (GLP) sets some restrictions on new
drivers to limit their exposure to risk. Parents need to be supportive
in ensuring that these restrictions are obeyed and by establishing
reasonable expectations for driving behaviour. If these
expectations are consistently not met, there need to be explicit
consequences. You may even consider the use of a family contract as a
pre-condition before granting permission for your child’s first licence.
In the days before the GLP parents had a strong control over their
children who had not reached the age of 18. If the child was not driving
properly the parent could withdraw their consent and ICBC would cancel
the child’s drivers licence. This was an effective
control over wayward young drivers.
The problem with this was that some parents used the system to impose
their will on children for purposes not related to driving. This became
apparent and the privilege was removed from the legislation. Once the
child was licensed, the courts or the Superintendent
of Motor Vehicles were the only entities that could cancel drivers
licences.
If the child did not own their own vehicle, the only control that
parents had was to restrict access to a vehicle. This is not as
effective these days as many young people aged 16 and 17 do own their
own vehicles.
There are still two tools of last resort that a parent can use to stop
an irresponsible youth from driving before they harm themselves or
others.
The first is a letter to the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles. If the
Superintendent is satisfied that the youth presents a danger, he may
prohibit the person from driving in the public interest. Police will
enforce the prohibition.
The second is to withdraw consent for the registration and licensing of
the youth’s vehicle by writing to ICBC. The licence plates will be
cancelled, effectively ending the ability to drive that vehicle legally.
The police will also enforce driving without
proper vehicle licence.
This is not a step to be take lightly by parents. If the withdrawal of
consent for registration and vehicle licensing is abused, no doubt it
will also be removed from the legislation as well.
Story URL:
https://www.drivesmartbc.ca/new-drivers/parental-consent-and-control-new-drivers
—
Constable Tim Schewe (Retired)
DriveSmartBC: Where better than average road users satisfy their curiosity.