Number Plates News

US Novice Drivers to Display Red Card

29 March 2010

Here's an excellent wheeze for the state to impose even more controls on the private motorist, and one which is certain to appeal to UK enforcement zealots:

New Jersey drivers aged under 21 will be required to display a small but distinct red sticker at the top left of their car's number plate. In some parts of the USA, 'minors' are restricted as to the number of passengers they can carry and even the times of day during which they are allowed to drive.

The rhetoric behind this plan relies on the usual mixture of platitudes and self-righteous "If you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to fear" do-gooding.

The legislation has acquired provenance under the name Kyleigh's Law', after a 16-year-old who was sadly killed in a road accident. Appalling as such a tragedy is, it may not necessarily follow that the unfortunate girl's peers are likely to suffer or cause the same fate unless they are singled-out and, no doubt, harassed by traffic cops.

The nearest we have already to the US model is our green 'P' plate, recommended for newly-qualified licence-holders. On the face of it, a perfectly sound and sensible idea. In reality, however, it has become little more than a voluntary and, naturally, unpopular method of advertising your vulnerability to the nearest over-enthusiastic police patrol.

In an ideal world, the 'P' plate would provide, as originally intended, a signal to experienced to make allowances and, sometimes advisedly, a wide berth. In these impatient and selfish times, however, they may all too often produce, in the supposedly mature motorist, the same impatient and inconsiderate response traditionally reserved for the learner-driver.