The A419 is a decent dual carriageway with sliproads on and off for all junctions(at least in the part where the two fatal accidents occurred, a bit further up you have some more dangerous junctions)

These kids are crashing in the early morning due to poor driving/drink rather than speeding, but yes you are quite right that it will be used in the 'speed kills' debate.

A far better way of tackling the problem is a 'probationary' system for the two years after you pass your test. maybe banning driving late at night, or driving passengers at that time.

Alternatively, make the test sufficiently stringent that it involves training for at least two years in order to have a hope of reaching a more demanding pass level, ideally starting at 16 i.e. off-road with the test available at 18 or two years after whenever driving lessons started with an appropriate minimum number of hours logged including varied conditions.

Or, keep the current arrangements and accept that driving is potentially dangerous, humans are fallible at all times no matter what system is introduced, and that freedom of choice has inevitable consequences that can sometimes be tragic.

There are claims that obtaining a driving licence has become more difficult recently but if so, is this due to the addition of 'new' elements of off-the-road testing or a real raising of the bar for on-road driving skills? Over 35+ years of driving experience I haven't noticed any overall improvement in the standard of driving. Roads and cars are generally much safer and medicare is better, this is where lives are being saved in my view.

In that case we need certain people to have an 'utter tool on-off' switch...

I agree with this, personally. People die - that's part of life. If people want to speed up the time in which that happens, leave that up to them.

Disagree, as a sad as this loss is, it is one incident out of the literally millions of car journeys that day. Driving is still pretty safe.

A better test would be useful though. And the NSL on the road has nothing to do with it. Late at night it is quite likely they (like virtually everyone else) would be going at a speed they chose.

Much like a road near me, had it dropped from 50mph to 30mph after a drunk driver crashed........ Absurd.

There were several opinions / options in my post, not forgetting Guam's, do we take it you disagree with all of them?! One was for no change basically, which is what you seem to be saying (may be wrong).

OK, so not all of them

Totally absurd.

Speaking only from my own personal experience you pass the test and then start really learning how to drive.

A 'probationary' system recognises that just because someone has passed the test does not mean they are a good driver and the only way to truly learn is hundreds of hours on different roads in different conditions.

Decades of training

We had a similar situation a few years back. Decent d/c, car full of youngsters finished their shift in local gastropub. No alcohol as far as i know, the conclusion was that the driver just fell asleep - and this only half a mile after a set of traffic lights and barely 10 minutes after they set off.

I don't think banning young drivers from having passengers would solve anything, once my brother (now 22) passed his driving test he regularly drove his friends around, including to and from college and sharing designated driver responsibilities on nights out.

In the 3 years after he passed his test he's been in two accidents, the one where he had a passenger was someone driving into the back of his car because they didn't see the red light he had stopped at. The accident that was his fault (took a corner too fast on an icy road) he didn't have a passenger, so banning him taking people wouldn't have prevented it. I'm well aware that he's probably in a minority for his age group, and I'm certainly not saying that he doesn't show off to his mates when given the opportunity, but new drivers will have accidents no matter how much cotton wool you wrap them in.

On the other hand a friend of his was hit and killed by a car on the A505 last year as he was walking home in the early hours of the morning. Didn't want to spend the money on a taxi and, for whatever reason, didn't phone anyone to ask for a lift home. If you ban young people his age from getting lifts from mates then you're going to have more incidents like that. Yes the sensible idea would have been to call for a taxi, but when you're 21 and spent most of the night at the pub then finding the money for a taxi seems like a bigger hassle than just making your own way home.

I definitely think that tests need to be more strict, you need to be able to show that you've had lessons in wet and dry weather, as well as summer and winter and you've done a certain number of hours driving at night as well, as well as some kind of course on the dangers of driving under the influence (weed as well as alcohol) and why driving like a plonker because you're showing off to your mates is a bad idea, possibly with an added discussion with a local policeman about how dangerous bald tyres or ancient breakpads are just as dangerous. The carrot that goes with all these sticks should be that if you pass your test with flying colours (say less than 5 minors) and have the paperwork to show that you've put in a lot of practise over the past two years, then you get lower insurance premiums.

But I suspect that most people would campaign against it because "driving lessons are expensive and my teenager can only afford 6 hours of them and it would be SO unfair".

Which then comes to the basic idea, that seems to have been forgotten in recent years, that driving is a privilege, not a right.

Given that so many fatal accidents happen on rural roads in the wee small hours, traffic enforcement should reflect this.