Suggestions "P" me off

Truth be told, I’m not the hugest fan of P platers of late. Not so much about how they’re driving, but it is what they’re driving. It shits me that some of these young-uns get to drive these nice and powerful cars, however my insurance company won’t let me touch one, even if I beg profusely and offer to “be their friend”.

But enough about my pending midlife crisis.

I just love subtle barbs.

A news story today outlines a crash in Sydney which took the lives of two people. It just so happens that these two people were driving some high powered sports cars, and are suspected to have been participating in an illegal street race.

But one sentence has pissed me off. If you look early in the piece, it reads, “Eerily resembling the recent spate of fatal crash scenes involving P-plate drivers”.

Normally I wouldn’t take issue with such a throwaway statement, but when there has been so much press into how to stop P platers from committing inadvertent mass suicide on the roads, I think that this comment was uncalled for.

Because in this instance, the driver was fully licensed. Well, the article doesn't indicate that they were a P plater at least. I think it's safe to assume that they were fully licensed.

Now, one crash doesn’t necessarily equate to a “trend”, but likening a crash like this, which didn’t involve P platers, to crashes that actually do involve P plate drivers seems to me just flagrant, old fashioned “blowing out of proportion”, even if it is in a relative subtle manner.

The mere mention of P platers in the article implies to me that the writer was only seeking a reaction. And not a reaction that befitted the actual event.

My opinion on the matter of kids in high powered cars, however, isn’t in the scope of this entry.

This entry is about how this article allowed conjecture to set the tone, instead of simply reporting the facts, and in one sentence seemingly tries to dislodge a keystone to cause an avalanche of protests from vocal minority groups against kids in high performance cars. I can just imagine the right wing talk shows having a field day with this issue.

In fact, after reading the article a number of times since beginning this entry, I cannot determine who was driving what. Maybe other people can make it out. Maybe I’m just too blind with rage.

But, having finished reading this article, I am interested in discovering how many fatalities were on Australian roads this year, and what percentage was P or L platers. I’m sure they’ve run a story on this before, but I wouldn’t mind reading it again.

Because it seems that it is not only P platers who kill themselves in high powered cars. I know many older and mature people who don’t have control over their midlife-crisis-mobile.

But I guess they’re different. Because they’re not young...