Originally Posted by alleycat58

Sounds very similar to what we have here in PA. When you're 16 you can take a written test to get a learner's permit. Once you get the lerner's permit, you must wait at least 6 months and have at least 60 hours of driver's training with a licensed driver over the age of 21 (it might be limited to a parent or guardian now, I'm not sure). You're not allowed any non-family passengers in the car either.

Once you get enough hours of training you can then take your road test. You have to show that you can control the vehicle on the road as well as parallel park and demonstrate knowledge of all equipment in the car (brakes, parking brake, lights, wipers, radio, turn signals, etc). Then once you pass that test you get your junior license. Basically it's almost a regular license except that you're not allowed to drive between certain hours (it's either 11pm or midnight and 6am) and I *THINK* there are some restrictions on the number of passengers you're allowed to have in the vehicle. You keep the junior license until you turn 18 (it used to be you could graduate to a regular license if you completed additional driver training, not sure if that's still the case or not).

I'm sure having graduated licensing helps prevent even more accidents, but the road tests here are a joke. One thing that I've heard mentioned which may prevent some accidents (not this one, but ones like the girl in the trans-am) is to have graduated classes of licenses. For example if you wanted to drive a car over a certain horsepower, you'd need to get a higher class of license and/or more training in that vehicle. I'll have to look for the article, it was in a paper publication but it might be online by now, but they suggested to the national highway transportation safety board to look at more factors involved in crashes involving persons age 18-24. Usually they just look at sobriety, speed, weather conditions, and seat belt usage. Another article that I DO think was online, but I'll have to find it, was a non-traditional driver education course which not only took kids on the road to drive in everyday conditions but also took them to a closed track where they set up an autocross-type course with wet and dry skidpads, slaloms, and various turns set up and taught teenagers about how the car would handle in different conditions, cornering limitations, and how to keep the car under control. I know I got a WHOLE new understanding of my car and it's limits when I autocrossed my Cavalier for the first time. There's a lot of things that driver education doesn't teach you, particularly about what happens when you start traveling at higher speeds.

This accident was certainly tragic but I guess at least it's got some good dialogue going on the board.

Originally Posted by alleycat58

Yep, looks like the Cobalt retains the Achilles heel of the Cavalier...poor side impact protection...

Originally Posted by cs_88

I think they should bring over german liscenseing standards to amercia. Mabye even the Autobaun while they are at it.