Young Ontario Drivers' Protest

20 posts / 0 new

Sat, 2008-11-22 15:29

Wilf Day

The almost overnight protest against the proposed new regulatory restrictions in young Ontario drivers has amassed 92,391 members on Facebook, with hundreds more every minute, I think.

Sadly, none of them seem to be babblers. A generation gap?

The proposed regulations will prohibit teen G2 drivers from carrying more than one passenger aged 19 and under all day during the first year of G2. Also, it will take longer to get the G2 since the G1 length, now 1 year, will increase to 18 months. That is now reducible to 8 months if the driver completes an approved driver education course, but that 8 months will be increased to 12 months under the proposed regulations.

I expect quite a few university students aged 18 or 19 will be affected by this, reducing the extent of car-pooling to get to campus. The Ministry may not have had them in mind. This would be a good wedge to attack the proposed regulations. Then, if they made one mistake, perhaps they made others.

Posters there say things like: "Our parking lots are already congested, adding more cars to the mix won't really help." "Several of my university friends carpool and this would adversely effect them. Most of them do not have a car and this is there only way (besides a taxi) to get to classes on time." "I'm totally for car-pooling, especially when a group of us want to hit the coffee shop down the road. but with this law we can't."

Andrea Horwath has a Facebook post:

Quote:

Bill 126 is legal discrimination

This government feels it has the right to discriminate against people when they are young. If young adults can pay taxes, if they can vote and, if they can get married - then they can sit at the grown ups table with government to help figure out solutions, just like all other adults.

We say we want to encourage young people in responsible behaviour - but if a young woman is the designated driver and she goes out with three of her friends, the government tells her she can only drive one of them home. What happened to being responsible and environmentally conscious?

Young people care about drunk driving. The government should talk to young people when looking for solutions instead of treating them like children.

Seems like she's the only one listening.

Sun, 2008-11-23 03:59

Wilf Day

Now up to 97,359 members in the Facebook group. That's about ten more every minute, slowing down, but still, aren't numbers like that remarkable?

A young man from Windsor posts "Time for people to storm Ontario Parliament en masse." A student from Kitchener's St. James Catholic High School replies "Good idea. We'll remember that for the protest day." (Someone has just scheduled one for Saturday, December 20, at Queen's Park. I'm not sure this group will wait that long.) And he makes a typical comment "I don't like being generalized about. This bill generalizes me with a group of people I despise. Personally I think our province gets a little smarter every time some dumbass drunk wraps himself around a telephone pole. I am against this bill because this bill discriminates against me and my fellow teens for simply being teens."

A young woman who just finished highschool in June at St. Paul Secondary School in Toronto writes "I car pool to school in the morning, what am I supposed to say to my friends who have no way of getting there? Oops sorry, can't drive you or I'll get my license taken away. This is just effing ridiculous." A girl from Stratford writes "What about car pooling? That's how teenagers get around. We car pool to sporting events, to school events, to concerts etc. Now that we can only have one passenger a time, there's going to be more cars on the road, more gas, more pollution. Parents are going to want to drive their kids everywhere til they're 19? Parents are happy once their kids have their licenses. They can drive themselve and friends to early morning practices and all the events they go to." A young man who just finished high school in Barrie in June writes "One passenger per car. Wouldn't that mean more cars on the road? and then that would mean a higher chance of an accident due to volume?"

A Windsor college student writes "quite often my friends and i will get together at someone's house. Now most of us have parents that work, so we cannot get rides from them. Now if these new laws pass we could have upwards of 3 cars sitting in a driveway/ on the road. Assuming of course that all available drivers have a car available to them (which rarely happens), failing that the remaining drivers would have to make several trips to transport everyone to where ever we decided to meet up, wasting a ton of gas in the process." A young woman college student adds "busses are a GREAT idea for city kids.... But i know a lot of people in small towns that do car pool to sport games, the city, the mall, the movies, etc... these kids are the ones who are going to get hurt, lose out on being able to have a socal life outside of highschool, some people can't get their parents to drive them to the city 35 min away from home.... so they can see a movie with their friends.... because their parents work! It's going to be tough on a lot of people."

Sun, 2008-11-23 07:59

George Victor

A Puritanical act on the part of government, I'd say, strangely ignoring a huge voter demographic. The MADD folks can't have that much swat, surely? Or are we moving into a new, spontaneous political era where the historic head count has been considered too cynical? Unlikely in the age of Facebook. I'll bet they were just smoking something.

They who draw up the law will be re-arranging the numbers as we type.

Sun, 2008-11-23 10:16

Kinetix

Eep, I didn't know it was this bad.

When I was 20 or so I was also on my G2 license; I didn't apply right away when I was 16 because I hadn't needed a vehicle at that age.

I was unemployed and needed a way to pay the bills. I was looking for work but as a computer geek stuck in the middle of the dot-com collapse, looking for work in Ottawa where I lived at the time wasn't promising. Thousands of qualified IT professionals fleeing from the hollowed out, fire-ravaged skeletons of Nortel, Gandalf and JDS Fitel had made it clear that if I didn't want tostarve to death, I'd have to leave Ottawa and leave it fast.

I was flat broke but I had a car, and I had a goal. Every week, twice a week, I would ferry a carload of partying teenagers to concerts and raves in Toronto for $30 a head return trip. This covered my gas and a bit of food and my laundry. I arranged job interviews with interviewers in Toronto and it eventually paid off. After doing this for a month or two I had a job and a couch to sleep on, and I packed up and moved to Toronto. A couple of weeks later I moved into my own apartment. If I had stayed in Ottawa I would have been on social assistance along with many hundreds of other otherwise qualified people.

Now Ontario has made this entirely illegal: I would not be permitted to offer a pay-per-ride carpool service, and I would not be allowed to drive the people that could not afford to travel either way. People in their 20s or 30s would have taken the train, but when you're a teenager, you go with what you've got.

If I hadn't done this, my life would be very different today, and I find it absolutely ridiculous that in an effort to remain off welfare I could have lost my license and faced huge fines. Thanks Ma McGuinty.

Sun, 2008-11-23 11:09

Wilf Day

More Facebook comments.

A young man from Wingham (that's north of Stratford), now in second year at UOIT:

Quote:
I'm from a very rural area, where everything is a good 10-30 minute drive away. People are all about the car-pooling these days, and then this happens? I'm not talking about 'cramming' my vehicle with other people, I'm talking about taking more than ONE person. Because it really is a waste of gas if there are four people going to the exact same spot, but we cannot carpool because of this dumb law.

A female high school student in Iroquois Falls:

Quote:
I carpool to work and to school because gas is outrageously expensive.

A female high school student in the town of Perth:

Quote:
I live in a town where there's school buses and cars. No buses, no subways, and what do we do when we want to to see a movie?

Sun, 2008-11-23 11:41

Kinetix

Has anyone thought about having mandatory eye exams and road tests for seniors? Oh, I forgot, they can vote.

You know what I'd love? Science based policy.

Sun, 2008-11-23 13:06

madmax

McGuinty is going to the well one time to many. This reminds me of how the Conservatives always hype "tough on crime" . McGuinty has received some capital with all these new traffic laws which are absolutely stupid in their application. But they sound good to people.

Sun, 2008-11-23 14:30

Lard Tunderin Jeezus Lard Tunderin Jeezus's picture

A previous, related thread...

Sun, 2008-11-23 23:09

Wilf Day

More quotes from the Facebook group:

A fellow in his last year of high school in the city of Cambridge:

Quote:
Four g2 licensed drivers want to go to a movie, it's a snowy night, so they decide to take one car right, why take two, but now they won't have a choice, doubling the amount of cars on the road.

A Hamilton woman:

Quote:
The one thing I LOVE about these laws is that its given a reason for teens/young drivers to talk about POLICTICS. I was almost surprised with some people's, lets say, passion about this topic, and are educated about it, and have done their research and have taught me a thing or two.

A grade 11 male student in the city of Cambridge:

Quote:
In my circle of friends, I'm one of two who had the initiative to get their G2 at 17. We do all the driving for everyone. This new bill makes it impossible for us to go anywhere as a group. I honestly can't understand why this is suddenly now the issue.

A young woman in the Sudbury area:

Quote:
What about those of us who live on our own?
Who don't have parents?
Who have children and are under the age of 20?
Who want to carpool to escape the winters?
Who are opting to drive their drunk friends home from a party, instead of letting them drive themselves?

Quote:
The 1 passenger limit is ridiculous. Who's more distracted? a 19 year old with 4 friends in the car, or a 33 year old woman driving a Yukon with 3 screaming crying kids in the backseat.

Mon, 2008-11-24 00:03

#10

genstrike

Yeah, I can understand some restrictions on young drivers, like a lower BAC to get young drivers in the habit of not driving after "just one or two", but banning carpooling is just absolutely ridiculous. Whose idiotic idea was this?

I'm just trying to think of the number of times when I was 18-19 and me and 2-3 friends the same age were hanging out and decided to get some McD's or go to a movie or something. Especially when we've all been drinking except for the DD.

Is this just a silly response to some sort of tragic accident where a whole carload of young people driving back from a party gets themselves all killed or something? Then I can see why politicians want to do it, so they look like they're doing something.

Mon, 2008-11-24 01:45

#11

RevolutionPlease RevolutionPlease's picture

Mulcahy must be well connected. Really sad how this came about.

Only bright spot is the youth are getting involved. :)

Mon, 2008-11-24 09:45

#12

Wilf Day

Now 105,185 members, and they have made 10,238 wall posts, plus opened 283 Discussion Topics.

Mon, 2008-11-24 09:55

#13

Frustrated Mess Frustrated Mess's picture

Not war, not torture, not even global climate change ... but cars. Always cars.

Mon, 2008-11-24 10:10

#14

Michelle

I joined the Facebook group and posted this to my Facebook page a few days ago, but I forgot to come back and post it on babble! Thanks, Wilf, for bringing this here.

This is absolutely frigging ridiculous. We're getting to the point where were infantilizing our youth to a degree that is not only outrageous but also dangerous.

I went to a rural high school. We held music group practices on weekday evenings, after supper. Almost all of us got our licenses as soon after turning 16 as we could, and our parents were relieved at no longer having to chauffeur us everywhere. It was a 10-15 minute drive from my neighbourhood to my high school - we were bussed there.

I can't imagine not having been able to carpool to our music practices. Whenever I drove, I usually had two or three others in the car. Or I caught a ride with some other kid who was driving three or four of us to practice.

We did the same thing when we went into town to go to the movies. And high school dances. And parties at our friends' places. And you know what? We're all still alive.

You can't protect kids forever. Kids have to learn by doing. Kids also have to learn by facing consequences when they do dumb things behind the wheel. And teenagers aren't the only ones who do dumb things behind the wheel.

The stupid thing is, these laws are being made by the same people who got their licenses without any of this graduated crap, who carpooled when THEY were teenagers, etc. I don't know about anyone else, but when I was a teenager and we went to drinking parties, we actually DID make sure we had designated drivers. There were always a few kids who didn't drink. They were the ones who brought cars. We actually WERE responsible, because our parents treated us like we were responsible.

Sure, they worried about us, but it's my experience that the parents who worried least were the ones who were realistic, let their kids talk to them about drinking, let them go to parties where they knew there would be drinking, and talked to their parents about who drank, who didn't, who would be driving, and about taking their own turn at being the driver and driving home friends from parties.

Mon, 2008-11-24 13:35

#15

Star Spangled C...

Interestingly, you CAN get a full PILOT's license at 18 but not a full driver's license? You can put as many damn people you want in a plane but not in a CAR?

This whole thing is stupid beyond words. McGuinty has an amazing ability to ignore every IMPORTANT issue and to come out strongly on every stupid little idea he can find. Let's ban pit bulls! Let's get rid of soda in schools! Lets make it tougher to carpool! What's that? the health care system is a mess, the manufacturing sector is is rapid decline, there are thousands of poor people? Well, we'll deal with that when we're done with the important stuff....like creating Family Day!

Mon, 2008-11-24 13:48

#16

genstrike

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

Interestingly, you CAN get a full PILOT's license at 18 but not a full driver's license? You can put as many damn people you want in a plane but not in a CAR?

Actually, I think you can get your pilot's liscence at 17

Mon, 2008-11-24 16:30

#17

remind

Michelle wrote:
This is absolutely frigging ridiculous. We're getting to the point where were infantilizing our youth to a degree that is not only outrageous but also dangerous.

I strongly agree with this statement. Why do you think it is happening?

Quote:
I went to a rural high school...I can't imagine not having been able to carpool...And you know what? We're all still alive.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems. As I did too, and there were about 20 or so of us that travelled in a group, to all sorts of events and endeavours, usually in a couple cars and in the "blue van" lines. The blue van lines were 2 blue vans that friends owned, in which we travelled to concerts, ball games, swimming, school events and other. We all took turns borrowing our parents vehicles, if we did not own our own. Which also made it less of a burden on parents providing the transportation as it was rotated borrowing, and we were very diligent about sharing the transportation burden and with not drinking and driving, or drugging and driving.

Quote:
They were the ones who brought cars. We actually WERE responsible, because our parents treated us like we were responsible.

Exactly! As is your next comment.

Quote:
Sure, they worried about us, but it's my experience that the parents who worried least were the ones who were realistic, let their kids talk to them about drinking, let them go to parties where they knew there would be drinking, and talked to their parents about who drank, who didn't, who would be driving, and about taking their own turn at being the driver and driving home friends from parties.

There was not 1 serious accident in all the years I went to high school, and just a couple of minor fender benders that could have happened to anyone, in any circumstance.

Do you think "helicopter" parents are responsible for this? ;)

___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"

Tue, 2008-11-25 21:54

#18

Wilf Day

The premier won't be surfing Facebook in his office:

Quote:
"If you've got that many young people who are really interested in this, they're not going to come to committee hearings. I think we need to find a way to get onto Facebook. We need to find a way to engage in a dialogue in a social network where they are," McGuinty told reporters at Queen's Park, Tuesday.

But the website . . . has been banned from government computers since May 2007, and the premier said Tuesday he isn't yet prepared to lift that ban.

If McGuinty isn't on Facebook yet, he's about the only one. Amazing.

The protest group now has 114,892 members.

Tue, 2008-11-25 22:48

#19

genstrike

Wilf Day wrote:

The premier won't be surfing Facebook in his office:

Quote:
"If you've got that many young people who are really interested in this, they're not going to come to committee hearings. I think we need to find a way to get onto Facebook. We need to find a way to engage in a dialogue in a social network where they are," McGuinty told reporters at Queen's Park, Tuesday.

But the website . . . has been banned from government computers since May 2007, and the premier said Tuesday he isn't yet prepared to lift that ban.

If McGuinty isn't on Facebook yet, he's about the only one. Amazing.

The protest group now has 114,892 members.

I know in Manitoba it's banned on government computers, except for MLAs and such because they use it to communicate to their constituents.

Fri, 2008-11-28 10:13

#20

baylis3b

Wilf Day wrote:

More Facebook comments.

A young man from Wingham (that's north of Stratford), now in second year at UOIT:

Quote:
I'm from a very rural area, where everything is a good 10-30 minute drive away. People are all about the car-pooling these days, and then this happens? I'm not talking about 'cramming' my vehicle with other people, I'm talking about taking more than ONE person. Because it really is a waste of gas if there are four people going to the exact same spot, but we cannot carpool because of this dumb law.

A female high school student in Iroquois Falls:

Quote:
I carpool to work and to school because gas is outrageously expensive.

A female high school student in the town of Perth:

Quote:
I live in a town where there's school buses and cars. No buses, no subways, and what do we do when we want to to see a movie?

A young man in the town of Burlington

I also do a lot of carpooling, between driving friends to school or just to go out to the club, now we all have to take our own car, Its tough now for when we wont to go out clubbin and drinking, because we cant have a designated driver anymore, I dont live near most of my friends, and how is it beter for the envoirnment if everyone has to take there own car, I mean why would they make a carpool lane if now were not allowed to use it, This is going to cause a lot of problems for us younger people, even more so of the ones who cant afford a car and carpool to school, now they cant because of this law, I cant believe that they would pass a law like this, I hope that they go back and fix there mistake and take this law back.