Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
The Nov. 29 editorial, “Curbing speed of exotic car rentals is a reasonable safety precaution” misses the mark on vehicle safety and speed.
People can be killed by a four-cylinder import as easily and quickly as by an exotic 400-horsepower machine. Almost all cars can go over 100 mph. Does it matter if you’re hit and killed by a $2,000 clunker or a $200,000 exotic? I think not, and limiting speed to, say, 75 mph means nothing if the operator doesn’t possess the basic skills to operate a vehicle. Driving tests do nothing to teach the dynamics of gravity and law of inertia when handling a 3,000-plus pound missile. Road tests only look for basic vehicle-handling characteristics such as stop, go, turn and signal use (which many people ignore after their tests). We don’t even test for parallel parking anymore.
Law enforcement officers learn tactical vehicle operations that give us understanding of the requirements of safe vehicle handling and performance.
Until we mandate these types of courses for new drivers, we will not stem the consequences of unsafe driving. We will also never eliminate these events because people will always choose to ignore or violate proper driving standards since they believe there are no consequences to their actions.
