jacostang

I agree and my 16 year old son who turns 17 this month still has no drivers license due to grades.. Hes not failing but not up to par yet and I would never give him the keys to even my 300hp Mustang!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

future9er24

Moron

StangMahn

Sorry, I'm 18, and this guy is an @ss. I'm not going to say that I've never made any bad driving decisions, because I have. Fortunately I have been lucky enough to never had problems from them. The fault also lies in the parents, for letting him use the car period, and for letting him drive after 4 tickets. I dont feel sorry for him, but I do feel sorry for the families, and it just irritates me that he took 4 others with him. Maybe this is a sign of Darwin's theory of natural selection...

There's much better places to test the limits of your car. Go to a drag strip. The one I go to is $10 to get in, $10 to run, the track is specifically for that, and there's paramedics, and it's all sanctioned. It's so safe.

bob

Tru'dat. I brought this very thing up with a coworker of mine, I told her to save some pennies and send her son to a real drivng school, rather than the pathetic education administered by the school system - which IMO is merely aimed at passing a written test), I had some info bookmarked and sent her the link. The next day, she scoffed at the idea of spending "so much money".

I dont have any kids of my own (nor do I plan to in the forseable future), but I wouldn't have a problem with spending a coupla thousand on some driving courses.

bob

Btw, did it say in the article or in the videos if the kid borrowed the car or swiped the keys, and IIRC on the M5 has a valet function where you can reduce the output of the engine by 200 or so HP.

hi5.0

Good questions - I was going to ask the same thing about whether or not he had the parents' blessing to use the car. As for the valet function, I'm guessing he probably learned how to bypass it along with harnessing the full 500hp after hanging out on the M5 forums. If not, the results were still ugly.

theedge67

Even if the car had the Valet function on it, that doesn't mean Daddy knew anything about it, much less knew how to turn it on. The kid would have probably figured out how to turn it off anyway.

rhumb

It'll seem cheap compared to the possible alternatives: sky high insurance after inevitable stupid wrecks, ER and ICU bills, rehab bills, prosthetics, law suits from dead friend's parents, etc.

cntchds

And being given something is exactly why they lack the respect. If they had to put an ounce of sweat into earning that car (not grades, actually putting a dollar into it), then they would have so much more respect for their car since it was something they worked for, not just handed the keys to.

I haven't ever raced either. The fastest I've ever even accelerated was when I was next to my (at the time) girlfriend at a stop light, and she revved at me, so we sped to the speed limit... quite uneventful really being in a truck with an inline four, and her being in a ratty old Honda.

Responsibility and wrecks don't exactly go hand in hand I don't think, though, but that is probably a debate for some other time.

Defensive, yes. Performance? No. Why should we encourage the youth to feel comfortable driving fast? Leaving them scared by sharing things like this is what we need more of, not teaching them how to do it and saying to themselves "Well I took a course, so I can easily go 100mph in a 25 with all my best friends in the car..."

Just because you "know" they are going to speed should be reason enough to keep the keys away.

rhumb

I've never been much of a fan of fear and ignorance, just look at politics and look where that's gotten us lately.

As for performance driving, ideally, they will gain a clear understanding of and proper respect for driving fast and all that entails, good and bad. Without such training and actual driving experience, those little immortals will have the typical grossly inflated view of their own driving prowess and faint understanding of their actual limitations and subsequent consequences.

Junior/little miss certainly aren't going to be so courteous as to announce that they're going to go out hooning, giving due notice to ****** away the keys and lock them in the basement until they turn 32 and suddenly mellow out.

bob

QFT!+1 (think I got that right). Besides, in the case of your average young male, they will be suffering from a hormonal imbalance which ultimately casues oxygen deprivation in the brain due to blood pooling in another part of the body ostensibly due to trying to impress the opposite sex both directly and indirectly. Might as well give them the tools nessecary to survive this confusing time (of course, come to think of it, the behavior seems to persist until said males have children).