Chris2 (249) Says:

November 15th, 2009 at 9:53 am
These deaths increasingly happen because more and more parents today, are failures as parents.

Temptations have always been there for teenagers (of every generation for centuries), but it is their parents who are responsible for not instilling in their children a sense of what is safe or not safe (like getting into a car driven by a drunk driver), or developing their own moral compass about what is right or wrong.

I’m not too bothered that these kids die, so long as they only hurt themselves in the process. It’s natural selection really, where the stupid and dumb are removed from the gene pool.

“K.P.D”
Some parent can do all the right things and teach their children to the very best of their abilities, BUT you have to remember that we are only human and every once and a while we may forgot our lessons we were taught and make mistakes…thats how we learn. Ezra made a bad mistake with getting into that car and the sad thing was that unlike his friends he wasnt able to learn from it…it had absoutly nothing to do with his upbringing because he had an amazing family!!!

and NOBODY should wish that they only hurt themselves in these accidents because they are still somebodies parent, child, grandchild, niece/nephew, sibling, cousin and friend…being dumb and stupid are apart of life and you have to make mistakes to learn and maybe become a better person

as for the driver, i personally knew him as well and have know him to be very self-obsorbed and immature person…police need to be more harder on the law espicially when there are so many teens driving around with the same mind-frame as him…they think they are unstoppable…2 weeks before the accident he was pulled up by a policeman on his way to hamilton…he got fined with speeding and driving on a learners license without a full-licensed person in the car with him…a fine doesnt work…people just throw away money like nobodies business, laugh and move on not thinking about the serious concequences…if his caregivers were rung up, his license or even car was taken off him for a short period of time and he was given some sort of counciling or awareness about road safety and the consequences then he may have learned his lesson and ezra will still be hear with us…i know theres not one answer that will solve the problem but if it gets through to even a few teenagers then imagine how many lives would already be saved…there definatly needs to be some sort of road awareness programs when we go through each stage of our license and when it gets renewed

Yeah, I got trashed in bars too, then we would look for parties to go to afterwards. But that has now reversed, young people often get trashed on cheap plonk at home/parties and then go out clubbing, I think many intend to save on bar prices by tanking up first but I don’t know how successful that is.

and 18 for going to bars (where drinking to excess is theoretically far more difficult).

I laughed so much I now need a drink. The places that I have got most trashed in have always been bars.

Chris’ post above at 8:08 pm highlights the problem and mindset of those 18 year olds still at college. A 20 year old has usually well and truly left college life behind, and is unlikely to manufacture false IDs for college kids. A different story when you are 18 and most of your mates and peers are still at college with you.

We are doing neither society nor ‘kids’ under 20 a favour by retaining a legal drinking age of 18.
This was another social engineering experiment gone wrong which the previous Labour government brought in – and we need to chuck it out ASAP!

When are you going to accept that the drinking age, at 18, is too low, and that under 18 year-olds are queuing up to pay $100 to buy fake ID’s, for the sole purpose of getting into pubs?

Your support of the current 18 year-old drinking age is as flawed as you support of the people who wanted to use cellphones whilst driving. I’m glad you are not in Parliament.

Many 18 year olds are still at college and socialise with mainly college kids. They generally do not socialise with adults over 18. Whereas 20 year olds are either working or attending tertiary education institutes. They generally associate with those their own age or older; especially if working. Those you socialise with, and spend time with hugely influence your world view and patterns of behaviour. Surely this is born out by the blow out in youth drunkenness statistics, and the relatively recent development of a youth drinking culture of those under 20, since the age was dropped to 18.

Why are we arguing about this – the stats speak for themselves.

Put the age back up to 20 – the experiment has failed, and failed badly!

The result is that the single biggest cause of death for young people in this country is motor accidents – 33.5% in fact. Logic suggests that if you raise the driving and drinking ages, than fewer young people will die on the road, and they will be less likely to wipe out innocent motorists in the process.

It is unhelpful in this discussion to throw in the irrelevant distraction of age restrictions for marriage, sex and joining the army. The issue is about limiting the ability of young people to kill themselves, and especially others, by driving pissed.

Drinking is a problem that won’t be fixed by regulating more. And it is not just a teenage problem, getting pissed and make a joe hunt of yourself is commonly seen to be “normal” here across a wide age range. Laws are not going to change adult attitudes to alcohol, so teenagers will keep getting many wrong messages.

Weird logic DPF – I’m not aware that voting, marrying and having sex are potentially fatal activities. Do you know otherwise?

And joining the Army is a very safe occupation – more die from accidents at home (like driving Unimogs over cliffs), than fighting abroad.

And regarding driving, well the Government during your absence overseas has all but declared it intends raising the driving age.

[DPF: The driving age is going from 15 to 16 - something I support. By your logic it would be 20. And joinging the Army can be very fatal. And so can sex - ever heard of AIDs. And marriage is a life long commitment. How can you possibly say a 19 year old can be mature enough to decide to get married, but not to purchase a bottle of wine]

If he wasnt pretty pissed (ie: about 3 bottles of wine equivalent – thats a LOT of alcohol) then its almost certain that he wouldnt have done all the other stupid things – like driving.

He was too high to walk and broke from buying all those drugs.

How else was he to travel?

That’s why I stopped donating money to the Sallies years ago. They not only protect paedophiles but are a pack of wowsers too. Good grief.