You know what’s scarier than Wes Craven flicks and the price of gas?

Being a parent to a child about to turn 18 and start driving.

I am one of them.

My son — the oldest of three boys who might collectively spur my mental downfall by the time they’re all at this stage — is immersed in car culture.

He’s chomping at the bit to merge into local traffic, driving not just as a means to get from A to B, but as a pastime, because he enjoys it.

Recent incidents in the Goulburn Valley have me nervous for his safety.

Even if we do all the right things on the road, we’re not immune to road trauma.

And when there are people out there with no regard for anyone else’s lives, it’s even more terrifying.

My son’s risk is increased purely because he’ll be on the roads more often.

But also, he probably won’t always be the driver, whose ability I trust; he probably won’t always be travelling in his classic car (that I’m confident he wouldn’t flog anyway because he’s so very precious about preserving its condition and collectability).

He’ll be getting in cars with his peers.

I’ve gotten in cars I shouldn’t have when I was younger.

We’ve all made poor judgment calls and many of us survived only through luck.

But, as parents, we have no choice but to trust that our kids will make good decisions and that we’ve empowered them enough to speak up, get out of certain cars, and know they can call us to come and pick them up, even if they’re stranded out in the middle of nowhere at 2am after doing so.

It’s maddening when people put others at risk or intentionally hurt others.

By all means, go risk your own lives doing dumb stuff, but keep it off public roads full of innocent people.

A passerby at the scene of a recent high-speed crash I was covering stopped to chat to me.

He was a mortician.

“I want to drag these people in and show them what I have to do and make them vomit,” he said, referring to putting accident victims back together before burial.

“See if they still want to drive recklessly.”

It was harsh, and it activated a corner of my imagination that was shocked enough, let alone seeing the result of trauma up close in real life.

But maybe that’s what it takes to get through to reckless drivers.

After all, our first responders don’t have a choice to look away.

They are confronted with grisly and heartbreaking scenes every time they’re called to a serious accident.

It’s mental trauma they could do without, particularly when the accident could have been avoided.

The mortician said: “There will be an emergency services member who will have to take the day off work because of what they saw; these people don’t realise how their actions affect other people.”

But then I wonder if people — the younger generation in particular — have become desensitised through the widespread distribution of video footage through social media messaging apps of people dying or being seriously injured, or the flawless computer-generated imagery in film and lifelike games, or, now, with the saturation of AI.

Maybe it still wouldn’t sink in for some. Maybe it still wouldn’t seem real unless it was happening to them or someone they loved.

If he’s unaffected by his own behaviour, or his peers’, or strangers’ on the road, my son then has to contend with the state of them.

Cratered and lumpy, broken and dangerous, our cars are expected to be roadworthy to use them, but sadly our roads aren’t worthy of our cars.

Our cars are barely roadworthy by the time we get home after driving almost anywhere in Victoria now anyway, with holes big enough for a pet ferret to swim in on nearly every straight and bend.

No driver is equipped to deal with the appalling condition of them, let alone newbies.

People die, people get injured, and an incalculable amount of lives get altered for ever on our roads.

They are scary places.

Yet, as parents of budding adults, we have no choice but to take our foot off the pedal and our hands off the wheel.

Control, or, at least, the factors we could control up until now, are out of our hands.

Southern Riverina News Google News Panels

Sunday, 5th April 2026

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