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The idea of crushing cars is ludicrous. Yes there is a huge issue with a small section of young men and women when it comes to street racing, burnouts, dangerous driving and ‘boyracing’ but the idea of crushing cars with such a simplistic wave of the Ministerial fringe is just plain grandstanding.The are many reasons I believe this but let me give you 4 simple ones as to why this is a bad idea.
1. The offences that lead to a possibility of such a final result rest with the driver, not the car. So Master X, 19, is on his last warning and takes his parents car out one afternoon, the parents don’t know of his offences, and the young fella spins the wheels, get’s pulled over and mum and dad’s car get’s crushed.
2. If it is the boyracer’s car, he may have finance on it, so when it gets crushed the finance company/bank is out of pocket…and they recover losses from the rest of us in subsequent deals.
3. Lots of boyracers drive beat up old $500 cars, they get crushed, then the next night they have another $300 car on the road…what’s the point?
4. If a car has a worthwhile value, it is a resource that could be used by the police, cruching it is a waste of a resource that could benefit all of us…for it’s dollar value, or as some departments in the USA do, used as an undercover car.
I think that there are easier, immediate solutions to this issue…how about a curfew in Christchurch? Under 20, you can’t be on the road anywhere after 11pm. How about for the future limiting CC ratings for certain age drivers? How about raising the driving age?
As I said earlier, there is a problem here…especially with the latest incident in Christchurch, I’d like my ministers to come out with useful suggestions and solutions, not emotive, pontificating, grandstanding suggestions from a new minister seeking headlines
