Learning to drive has been a rite of passage for teenagers for just about forever. A car offers a teenager the kind of freedom they’ve never had before, but being a new driver also comes with risks. Parents naturally want to keep their kids safe by surrounding them in as huge a bank vault as possible. However, buying your kid the biggest pickup truck or SUV you can find could come with some consequences in a crash, and here’s why you might want to pass on that idea.
This subject has skidded across my desk after an offhand comment that I made on social media. If you follow my work, you know that I prefer to log off the moment I get done with work for the day. Unlike my wife, I don’t really care about social media. I couldn’t care less about Reels, Shorts, Snaps, TikToks, or whatever app people use. But there are times when I emerge from the shadows, post something, and then go back to living my life.
One of those times happened earlier this week. I opened up Threads to see what my wife has been posting, and I suppose that since the algorithm knows I like cars, one of the posts I saw was a parent talking about what cars they were going to buy their kids. To save you from visiting Threads, I’ll just post it as a quote:
Do not put your kid in a subcompact car when they get their license.
Corolla. Civic.
I wouldn’t even put them in a sedan.
Do you want them to survive their first accident or not?
My son will drive an F-150 and my daughter will drive an Expedition.
If you want to read the whole thing, click here.
The first thing that bugged me was the notion that a Toyota Corolla and a Honda Civic are “subcompact” cars. Maybe many decades ago, but not today. These cars are in a larger class called compacts, even though that is almost a misnomer, given how big today’s cars are. I suppose there’s a non-zero chance he was just naming two models he wouldn’t put his kid in, not saying they’re subcompacts, but it’s hard to tell.
Then there was that second part, where this person said that they were going to put brand-new drivers in a Ford F-150 and a Ford Expedition based on the idea that such vehicles were what they needed to survive a crash. Now, look, I should have scrolled on and read my wife’s posts as I intended, but this post got me hook, line, and sinker. I made a reply that explained that Corollas and Civics aren’t subcompacts, modern cars across all classes are remarkably safe, and that there are hidden dangers in putting first-time drivers in vehicles with high centers of gravity, high weights, and great size.
I then proceeded with my day, not thinking about my comment. As it turned out, this comment went viral. I’m such a lurker on social media that this, to my knowledge, was the first time I’ve ever made a viral comment on social media. Clearly, thousands of people care about this. But why?
Bigger Is Usually Safer
Buying a safe car isn’t as simple as buying the largest vehicle your money can buy. Likewise, a car that’s safe for one person can actually be dangerous for another person.
On July 31, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) published the results of a study into which modern cars are the safest and which ones were the least safe, based on fatality figures. The study tracked deaths from 2021 to 2024 in Model Year 2023 and older vehicles.
Some of what IIHS found out wasn’t particularly surprising. From IIHS:
More than half of the model 2023 vehicles with the highest driver death rates are small cars, sports cars or muscle cars, a new report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows.
“Even the safest small cars don’t fare well in crashes with large pickups and heavy SUVs,” IIHS President David Harkey said.
“Powerful engines and marketing that attracts aggressive drivers is the issue for sports cars and muscle cars. They’re dangerous mainly because of how they’re driven.”IIHS has been calculating driver death rates approximately every three years since 1989. This year marks the second time IIHS also calculated the “other-driver death rate” — the number of drivers in other vehicles killed in crashes with each model. Size and power define the worst models on that list too, but it’s the biggest vehicles that are most dangerous to others. Ten of the top 20 are large or very large pickups, including several heavy-duty variants with more powerful engines. Across all makes and models, the average driver death rate was 37 drivers per million registration years. The average other-driver death rate was 53. The other-driver death rate was most likely higher than the driver death rate because many of the crash partner vehicles were of older vintage and offered occupants less protection.
Some of this is just physics at work. If you crash a small and light vehicle like a Kia Rio into something big and heavy like a Ford F-150 crew cab, the big truck is likely to fare better. As someone who owns five Smart Fortwos, which was once the smallest modern car sold in America, this is something I’ve always been cognizant of.
It’s not that these cars are unsafe. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Today’s cars are built with the benefit of decades of safety research, innovations, and engineering. IIHS has a great way of showing this, too. Every once in a while, IIHS likes to smash a modern car into its vintage equivalent. The vintage car always loses, and it’s not even close. Those old beasts might have been heavy metal, but they crumple like beer cans and compromise their passenger compartments. Watch a 2026 Chevy Blazer obliterate a 1996 Chevy Blazer:
However, as the IIHS has said over the years, there are several factors that make larger vehicles the winners in crashes against small vehicles. Something to keep in mind is that, when IIHS, NHTSA, or other organizations perform crash testing, they are tossing cars into walls or having sleds ram the car. The kinetic energy is provided by the vehicle’s own weight. The tests do not show what happens when the vehicle crashes into something that is heavier than it is. IIHS notes:
Both size and weight affect the forces people inside a vehicle experience during a crash. The magnitude of those forces is directly related to the risk of injury. Larger vehicles have a longer distance from the front of the vehicle to the occupant compartment. The longer that distance, the more the frame of the vehicle can be crushed before it crushes the people inside. Long front ends only provide more protection in frontal crashes, but these crashes account for more than half of passenger vehicle occupant deaths.
Weight is important when two vehicles collide. The heavier vehicle will push the lighter one backward during the impact. That puts less force on the people inside the heavier vehicle and more on the people in the lighter vehicle.
IIHS demonstrated the role of size and weight in a series of crash tests in 2019, pairing a midsize SUV and small car made by Kia and a large car and minicar made by Toyota in collisions with each other. Both smaller vehicles, the 2018 Kia Forte and 2018 Toyota Yaris iA, had good ratings in the five IIHS tests relevant to driver protection, but they performed poorly in collisions with the larger vehicles.Improvements in crash protection have made vehicles of all sizes safer, but bigger vehicles are still safer than smaller ones even with those improvements. As the chart below illustrates, crash deaths decline as vehicle size increases. A similar chart using weight instead of size would look almost the same.
But Bigger Isn’t Always Better
Everything I have given you thus far supports the guy’s point. Even IIHS generally agrees that bigger is safer. So why shouldn’t you just go out and buy your kid a Ram 3500 right now? The unfortunate fact is that while a pickup truck might protect its occupants, it is disastrous for everyone else. From IIHS:
The model with the highest driver death rate was the Kia Rio, with 170 deaths per million registration years. The Ram 3500 crew cab long bed four-wheel-drive had the highest other-driver death rate, at 204 deaths per million registration years. Eighteen out of the 20 models with the lowest driver death rates are SUVs, including four small, nine midsize, four large and one very large model. Six models had death rates of 0.
The Chevrolet Camaro, Chevrolet Malibu and the two-wheel-drive versions of the Dodge Charger and Dodge Charger HEMI feature among both the models with the highest driver death rates and those with the highest other-driver death rates. All but one of the six models that feature among the vehicles with both the lowest driver and other-driver death rates are luxury SUVs.
The models on both these lists are the BMW X5 four-wheel-drive, BMW X7 four-wheel-drive, Porsche Cayenne four-wheel-drive, Volkswagen Atlas four-wheel-drive, Volvo XC60 four-wheel-drive and Volvo XC90 four-wheel-drive. The rates include only driver deaths because all vehicles on the road have drivers, but not all of them have passengers or the same number of passengers. The number of deaths is derived from the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System. Registration data come from Mobility Global.
To put that first paragraph in other words, Ram 3500 pickup trucks kill other drivers in crashes more often than the drivers of Kia Rios die in crashes. In fact, the list of vehicles that kill other drivers the most is almost entirely populated by pickup trucks, SUVs, and muscle cars. From IIHS:
According to the IIHS report, trucks don’t even have the lowest death rate for their own drivers. According to IIHS, the vehicle class that has the lowest deaths per million registered vehicle years is “very large luxury cars,” with 7 deaths per million registered vehicle years. Second to that is “large luxury SUVs” with 10 deaths per million registered vehicle years. Small pickup trucks come in at 31, large pickup trucks are at 29, and very large pickup trucks land at 24.
For comparison, the worst is the class that IIHS calls minicars, which have 158 deaths per million registered vehicle years. IIHS notes elsewhere that large SUVs and trucks are also known to kill more pedestrians and cyclists than smaller vehicles. Basically, a truck will probably protect you or your teenager fairly well, but will also leave you more likely to kill someone else in a crash. That doesn’t even mention the psychological toll of being in a crash where the other person dies.
Teenagers Are Terrible Drivers
Even after all of this, there’s another thing you need to consider. Teenagers are bad drivers and have crash rates over four times greater than adults. They have poor car control, don’t really know what they’re doing, and are piloting a multi-thousand-pound missile with all of the distractions of the world going on around them. They don’t have the experience to know to slow down for rain, snow, or ice. They don’t know the proper speeds to take a corner. Also, I was a teenager once, and I remember how I thought I was invincible. I did dumb things with cars back then that I’d never do today.
If you take a peek at the IIHS list of picks for teen drivers, there isn’t a single pickup truck on the list, and the largest SUV class is mid-size. IIHS is pretty clear on why:
As in past years, the list doesn’t include anything with excessive horsepower relative to weight or anything marketed for performance. However, many seemingly benign vehicles come in high-horsepower versions, so even when shopping from the IIHS-CR list, families should make sure to stick to the base engine. Powerful vehicles can entice young drivers to take risks or lead them to speed inadvertently.
Minicars, as well as anything under 2,750 pounds, are also excluded. Although smaller models tend to be popular with young drivers, they can’t protect their occupants adequately in crashes with bigger vehicles.
On the flip side, large SUVs and large pickups aren’t a good choice for inexperienced drivers because they can be hard to handle and take longer to stop. They also pose more risk to others on the road, including pedestrians, bicyclists, and people in smaller vehicles.
It’s also notable that large trucks and SUVs may roll more easily than smaller vehicles, especially if your teen outfits them with lift kits and larger tires.
Thus, the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. You don’t want to give your teen the largest possible vehicle at a time when they have no idea what they’re doing behind the wheel. As evidenced by IIHS findings, that could be a recipe for a life-altering disaster. However, it’s also true that maybe you don’t want to buy your kid that used Chevy Spark. Instead, IIHS recommends something like a Mazda 3, Toyota Camry, Subaru Forester, or a Volvo XC90. Check out the full list here.
The Choice Is Yours
Of course, none of this is really written in stone. Even the safest cars in the world have had fatalities. Likewise, many folks have grown up driving terrible, unsafe cars and gotten through unscathed. My first car was a 2001 Kia Rio that had a body of rust and an only halfway functional cooling system. I drove that car like a maniac.
Ultimately, as a parent, the decision is up to you. Buy your kid whatever you want. I suppose your teen should also have some input, too. However, I think that whatever decision you do make, it should be an informed one. Don’t just blindly buy a model on the assumption that it’s safe. Be sure to do some research and know what you and your teen are getting into. If you and your teen decide the risk of a certain vehicle is worth it, at least you decided from an informed place.
Above all else, I also recommend defensive driving classes and then, later, advanced driving classes. High school Driver’s Ed classes sometimes just teach you the basics, which is fine. But actually knowing how to handle a car rather than just drive it could potentially save your life one day. It’s also really fun, too. But no matter what you do, be safe out there!
Top photo: Ford/Chevy
We let my son buy a 2006 Miata as a first car. Yes we live in a town where everyone owns a huge pickup. He learned to drive carefully. He doesn’t text while driving since he’s engaged, needs to shift and generally enjoys the car on every trip. He also didn’t have a back seat of other teens telling him to “send it” and do dumb things. Having a car he paid for and cared about helped him respect the vehicle and not thrash it. His friend’s Ford Focus…that car was thrashed, loaned to friends and generally hooned every time it was started up.
Ironically I got t-boned by a 2017 Corolla while borrowing my son’s Miata. I was only bruised and the car drove home with a smashed door and quarter panel. The Corolla was a total loss. Light cars have better physics in some ways. I just got punted and spun. I was also just lucky. Every crash is different.
The problem with this kind of logic is that, to people like “sweatystartup”, your children are your children and everyone else is an insect.
Maybe teaching kids performance driving would improve things. My son who is now a sophomore in college knows what understeer and oversteer are, annd how to manage them. He has done much carting, and has taken rally driving lessons multiple times. He drives fast, but he drives well. I’m amazed at how little his peers know.
You had me until, “he drives fast.” Nope.
teaching driving at all is the real problem. moving the start to 15 for a permit, and then limited driving licenses at 16 do nothing if they get rid of drivers ed to get a license. it just moves the terrible learning curve to later in life and leaves it to them or more often than not disengaged parents.
There are people who moved here well after the age of 16. They’re the ones with “Student driver, please be patient” stickers on the back of their Teslas and gigantic pickup trucks.
Thankfully, behemoths are not as common in Austria as in the U.S. An XC 90 or Range Rover are the largest vehicles you are likely to encounter. So my kid got a Volvo V50 as her first car. Cheap, easy to park, all the airbags, a slow but not glacier-slow turbodiesel, and, of course, Volvo. Worked well.
Perfect – older, but not old, Volvo in the smallest horsepower available is the correct answer to the teenage driver question, IMHO. Sadly we don’t get really slow ones in the US.
Though slow doesn’t necessarily help. I drove an 80hp ’82 Subaru GL like and absolute madman when I was 17. How I survived my first few years of driving is a miracle, closest call being a near head-on collision due to passing in patchy fog and going off the road and sliding sideways for a hundred yards or more without flipping over. But for sure, anything faster and I would have been screwed, or screwed someone else.
Agreed, it’s still quick enough to be stupid in. It’s a modern-ish common rail turbodiesel, so some acceleration does happen once you reach 1700 rpm or so. So it’s not slow like the Golf Mk 3 1.4 I once had. She totalled it, of course. No one was hurt, so it did what it was supposed to do. Now she has an Opel Meriva with the 1.4 gas engine. Also slow, but also foolresistant, not foolproof.
I remember in high school a couple of us were riding with a buddy who had a late ’80s Subaru sedan and egging him on to get it up to like 90 or 100 (slight downhill lol) to see if we would get airborne over a mild hump in the road where another rural road crossed it (my parents lived out in the county in semi-rural Montana). Fortunately it did not send us airborne.
On the same road I managed to hit the roughly 95 mph speed limiter on both my mom’s Astro van and my dad’s Chevy pickup. So to your point yes you can do some really dumb stuff with slow vehicles, but I still think the fact that all those cars took awhile to reach scary speeds, which at the margins I still think will improve safety.
Oh, there was a set of railroad tracks in town that I *regularly* got serious air over in that Subaru. Luckily the road was shaped for gentle landings. Also regularly managed to bury the 85mph speedometer on gnarly Maine back roads. Once I was bombing down a back road I didn’t know and the road *ended* unexpectedly. I bounced over a bunch of rocks and stumps and had to use the jack to get the car off a log, somehow not doing any damage to the poor thing. I also managed to slide it sideways into a granite curb in a snowstorm trying to perfect handbrake turns (not knowing that those cars had the hand brake on the FRONT wheels…). That one was expensive for the folks…
I really don’t know how I survived my youth behind the wheel.
Definitely being slow to reach stupid speeds is a big help. I can’t imagine what an idiot I would have been with even as much performance as my next couple of cars had, ’85 Jetta 2dr and then an ’84 Jetta GLI – both of which were rather quicker than the Subaru, especially the GLI. German ponies seemed to be significantly stouter than Japanese ones in those days.
Oof yeh that’s a close call. Those old Subarus were pretty stout and had lot of suspension travel so that may have helped, me and a buddy bought a gently rolled ’86 GL wagon for cheap while in college with the intent to turn it into a rallycross car but quickly realized it was so godawful slow and poor handling that it would take waaaaay too much to turn it into something even remotely fun.
There was a spot in town where I managed to get both my parents cars airborne but it was not a smooth landing so I stopped after i really launched it in my dad’s pickup because I was afraid I was going to break something and it wasn’t really that fun anyways.
My first three were a ’90 Jimmy -> ’89 Mazda 626 Turbo –> ’88 Trans Am GTA, the latter two capable of some real speeds, though the Jimmy was really slow and probably a wise pick for my dad to steer me towards, though less than a year later I talked him into letting me sell the Jimmy and co-signing a loan to buy the Mazda so I could get something more fun, a process he’d foolishly help me repeat a few years later to get the Trans Am, an objectively worse car in every way besides tailout burnouts from a traffic light, and sort of looking cool. Fortunately the only accident I had was in the 626 and that had nothing to do with speed and was a relatively mild wreck. Though I did get Mazda up to 125 mph once on a really open section of rural freeway, sheesh in retrospect feels lucky I’m alive.
Huh. You just put a ton of time and effort into this. But, it was a waste. As a motorcycle commuter with over 50k miles of semi-urban all weather mileage, I can assure you that about 20-25 percent of American society doesn’t care if they make an “oppsie” that kills someone they don’t know. They may have said that the primary reason for arming the child with a massive car was for their own snowflake, but the second unspoken reason is also true. They don’t care if their little snowflake kills the motorcyclist or Prius driver that they don’t know. They might be a little peeved at the increase in their car insurance rate though.
Even if true, its good information for the people that do care.
Why not go full sociopath and put your kids in Kenworths and Peterbilts? “No F-250’s gonna mess with my progeny, you hear?”
De-mil’d Sherman tank. It’s the only way to be sure.
Pertinent; https://xkcd.com/3167/
Can I put in a word for good tires? A friend’s daughter was very sensible, a top student. Dad had her autocrossing so she could learn car control. Bought her a midsize Audi sedan. Going to school in a heavy rain, her car crossed the center line and hit a delivery truck, killing her. The police found nothing wrong with the car, but noted the tires had only about 3/32nd inch of tread. He’ll never know if the tragedy could have been avoided.
Tragic. 🙁
Much as I dislike having to get my own car through it’s MoT each year, it’s worth it for knowing that all the cars on the roads around me are (somewhat) safe.
There’s not nearly enough concern or education put into the topic of tires.
Good tires >>>> everything else.
I roll my eyes when I read about people needing “big brake kits” for their car. No, unless you’re going to the track, those are useless. Buy better tires instead.
That’s such a sad story, I feel for your friend. Sadly I think this is a downside of the widespread adoption of AWD? I live in rainy, hilly Seattle and am dismayed by how many awd CUVs I see with banana peel tires that even the average uninformed driver of a 2wd car would be able to tell were terrible because they’d get stuck every time they stopped on a hill.
I was a teenager once, and I remember how I thought I was invincible. I did dumb things with cars back then that I’d never do today.
I occasionally did dumb things with my car but those dumb things were trivial compared to the really dumb things other mid 80’s GenX teens were doing. Like regularly hitting 130 mph on back roads in a clapped out, hopped up Datsun 510s on bald junkyard bias ply tires.
Bad things did happen, one fateful day two of my friends lost control of their 510 and slammed into a tree doing about 60 (although who knows if they were paying attention to the speedometer or if it even worked). Fortunately they were wearing seatbelts. The car was wrecked, they had bruised skin and ribs, also at least one concussion. Both were hospitalized for a while but ended up OK.
Any lessons learned? No, not really.
Same things happened to another friend except this one hit a neighborhood streetlamp. Again car totaled, but despite a nasty concussion his enraged father sentenced him to old school hard labor breaking up a concrete patio with a sledgehammer for the next few days.
Any lessons learned? No, not really.
The parents weren’t immune from this. One student at my HS came from a rich Italian family rumored to be family. He was no friend of mine, he was an absolute wannabe bigshot aggressive alpha dog bully jerk and reputed to be the coke dealer for his circle of friends.
For his 16th he got a V8 Trans Am which upset him because he had expected a Corvette. So he lent it to a drunk friend at a partly who wrapped it around a street lamp.
He showed up a few days later with a brand new IROC Camaro. Again not a Corvette That ended up buried in another streetlamp almost as fast. And of course he showed up a few days after that in yet another brand new IROC. Rumors circulated he had been arrested for DUI but gotten off after Dad gave the judge a case of expensive wine. Whether there was any truth whatsoever to that tale I don’t know. It did sound like the kind of thing he’d have made up himself to boost his wannabe badass rep.
That IROC lasted longer so maybe he got the message destroying his toys wouldn’t get him better toys. Or maybe his parents said this is the very last time. Who knows.
I did see him at one point driving his IROC late at night, overstuffed with people doing 20+ over on a local expressway weaving from gutter to gutter, most likely blitzed DUI. He saw me, slowed down and shouted threats of extreme violence if I said anything. What a guy amIrite?
We also had the tragedy of a late 70’s Honda CVCC full of teens on school lunch hour playing The Streets of San Francisco crash at high speed into the back of a garbage truck. Most were killed instantly including my lab partner. But since this early in my freshman year and all the other events except the in this story came afterwards I am sorry to say no lessons were learned even from this tragedy, except by the school which closed the campus at lunchtime.
The only lesson I recall anyone learning was a couple of years after HS when a friend of a friend crashed his Rabbit GTI while “using up the tires” he was having replaced the next day. He crashed at high speed and his friend in the passenger seat was killed. THAT got the message across.
Maybe it’s only if one reaches their early 20’s that the reality of mortality starts to stick.
I don’t think my tired old Datsun 510 could hit 130 km/h on the Michelin radials nerdy me put on it.
With the 96hp L16 stock engine probably not. It could have though with a 150HP twin Hitachi carb L18SSS JDM police car engine in it* as my friend’s car had.
*Best repeated with the cadence of Ralphie breathfully telling his wish for an official Red Ryder blued-steel barrel carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock… and this thing which tells time!
And mine was a station wagon with a solid rear axle and not the IRS the others had. Silly me. But once sorted, it was a simple, reliable car for over 90K miles until my brother wrecked it.
Ah rich kids. One wanker at my school totaled four Saab turbos in three years. Not a scratch on HIM, of course.
Thankfully, nobody at my school died in a car crash, probably helped by the preponderance of hand-me-down Saabs, Volvos, and Plywood Pleasure Palaces and other relatively new and relatively safe for the 80s cars. One classmate and his parents were murdered by a crazy uncle though. <eek>
For sure I had slowed my roll behind the wheel considerably by the time I got out of college.
Well of course he was a wanker! All teenage boys are wankers, otherwise they explode.
ROFL!
I bought an ’88 Trans Am in 2002 when I got my first job post high school. While I cared about trying to be a good driver and had been behind the wheel for almost 3 years at that point I sure did some dumb stuff in that car looking back I’m kind of shocked I never wrecked it-including driving it through at least one Montana winter on all season tires.
Certainly I did some very stupid speeds in both my parents cars as well as egging on friends to do the same, fortunately got lucky and never had a big life changing accident. Maybe being a generation behind you the ’80s and ’90s cars we were driving in high school had just that little edge better handling thanks to the big leaps in tire tech between the late ’70s and the late ’90s? I really only remember two bad accidents that I knew of people having when I was in high school.
“fortunately got lucky and never had a big life changing accident.”
Its the life ending accidents that are the most worrisome. But yes late 80’s and 90’s cars were way better overall than the stuff we had, just as the cars of today are better than those.
Lots of good points raised in the article and comments. My kids are not yet driving age, but they are getting closer each day, and I think I stumbled upon, and unfortunately recently sold, the ideal first car: a Kia Niro. It isn’t fast, but can do both city and highway driving with no issue. It isn’t tall, but has enough ground clearance to handle clipping curbs without issue. It isn’t big, but it is new enough (it came out in 2017) that it has modern safety features while also not being overly expensive. It is utterly practical and utilitarian, but not at all unpleasant to drive, but sadly it doesn’t look cool so nobody but me will have their kids driving one.
My son put a lot of miles on a second-generation Honda CR-V we handed down to him as he grew up. Well now on his own, he and his wife have a 2024 Mazda CX-5 and a 2026 Subaru Outback. So much for nostalgia and brand loyalty, I guess. But he never wrecked it or got it stuck. I did wince a bit when he told me towards the end of high school that he, the CR-V and three friends did see 100 mph on a road that wasn’t a straight as an arrow interstate. I don’t think I ever took it above 80.
Sounds about right, I recounted elsewhere on here that I remember taking my mom’s Astro van up to the speed limiter, around 100 mph, on a two lane rural highway, though a pretty straight stretch which is pretty idiotic in retrospect.
You aren’t going to change minds by trying to convince them a truck has a high roll over rate or a smaller car is safe.
If you want to change minds about buying a full sized truck or suv as a kid’s first car, start talking liability. This is the language they understand and think about.
Earlier this year, in my area, a 17yr old kid in a full sized truck, ran a red light at a high speed, slammed into another car and caused a fatality accident, it was a DUI. 2 people dead, who knows what will happen to that kid.
This.
Good luck. Their perfect angel is incapable of being the cause of an accident. The protection by the big ass truck is for when they get T-Boned on their way home from church by someone else’s unholy demon spawn.
Liability is a detail (and expense) for the devil. Perfect angels don’t need it.
Prison.
B.R.A.K.E.S.
Free, excellent, what driver’s ed and parents won’t and can’t teach on open roads.
https://www.putonthebrakes.org/home
For all your newer drivers. Born out of a race driver parent’s tragic loss.
Looks great as long as it’s offered it nearby. Not much on the West Coast though.
BMWCCA does an excellent early driver training program. “Street Survival”.
https://bmwccafoundation.org/streetsurvival/
I paid for my nephew to do it.
This is the kind of parent that keeps an achievement album that goes through life’s milestones like “Baby’s first DUI”, “Baby’s first jail phone call”, “Baby’s first parole officer” etc.
Interesting to me that the list of vehicles most likely to kill others is absolutely dominated by Ram trucks. Everyone makes big heavy trucks, I guess they take their brand name seriously though
It suggests that their brand/marketing image draws a portion of the worst drivers away from other brands, to them. Unless there’s an economic element also.
Yeah, you are probably correct. Marketing is a helluva thing and while I don’t like Stellantis, they are good at it
Both. ALL of the really derelict trucks I see, being driven by the most derelict Methews and Methanies, are RAMs, both down here and up north.
The Brodozers are all Fords and GMs though – go figure. I don’t think I have ever seen a truly stupidly lifted, big-wheeled, undercarriage lit RAM.
And every one of the few Nissan Titans I have seen looked like it was obviously used for doing actual work.
I don’t think I have ever seen a lifted one. Or a lifted Tundra, for that matter (but maybe a couple of those). The small Japanese trucks, definitely.
I think it’s the branding. It says Ram right there on the steering wheel. Do you really think that people’s first thought is a male, extra boneheaded sheep, or, you know, ramming things?
If the steering wheel said something else, Dodge for example, maybe the drivers would be subliminally persuaded to drive around things than ram into them.
I’m pretty sure the Ram branding was chosen to trade on an aggressive image, not so much the literal sheepfucker thing..
Sheepfucker 2500 does have a nice ring to it. “Oh , I see you came in the sheepfucker today’
As someone that incidentally went through three different vehicles when I started driving back in the mid-Aughts (I’ve now officially been driving for TWO DECADES which is making my bones creak), back then, it was NOT common practice for kids to be put in big, heavy duty trucks or SUV’s as their first car, unless the parents happened to be rich or they were farm kids (I was a farm kid and my first vehicle was a ’95 F-150, a very nice one, too). I started with a ’95 F-150, moved to a ’90 Mercedes 300TE Station wagon (I had a weird predilection with German cars and wanted to be driving something no one else had, which was quite stupid for a 16 year old in 2005) which turned out to be a whole rolled back odometer/mechanical fiasco, and that eventually got parked and I bought a ’98 Forester S with a rebuilt title and 40k miles my senior year that was admittedly the kind of car I should have bought in the first place.
The ‘rich kid’ in my school, a beefy football jock named Seth (who was actually surprisingly nice) did drive a fire engine red 2006 Ram MegaCab with a Cummins, but he paid for the insurance, worked at his parents onion warehouse on weekdays when he didn’t have football practice, and he was forbidden to have more than two other people in the truck unless he was taking fellow football players to or from practice. His dad told him if he was seen clowning around in it, truck keys would be taken away and he’d be taking the four wheeler to school and work. He never did.
I have pictures of my high school parking lot (I was the school photographer) and it was a mix of small to midsize sedans; Aleros, Malibu’s and Grand Ams, Camry’s, Intrepid’s and Taurus’s were half the parking lot, with a few F&F treatment Accords and EF Civic’s or pimped out Caddy’s/Lincoln’s primarily driven by the large Mexican contingency of our student population. There was definitely a fair few F-150’s and Silverado’s and Ram’s with the odd Ranger or S10, but those were almost always at least a decade old, and were the farm kid’s dad’s hand-me-down trucks. A few kids had old school sports cars, but the parents had the same rule: if they were seen screwing around, the keys got yanked. I remember one kid, his dad was a cop and he had a Fox body GT ‘Stang. For two months my junior year, he was showing up in a white ’96 Lexus ES300. He got a speeding ticket and Dad made him swap cars with his mom. He got the car back when he paid the ticket off.
I do know that the kids screwed around (I drag raced my to-this-day best friend Landon in my ’90 Benz 300TE 4MATIC wagon against his ’86 T-Bird Turbo, which I knew I was gonna lose but was fun to do anyways) but there was a general greater sense of ‘time and place’ for said vehicular shenanigans. There were certain roads that you went to race or top out your vehicle on (the rural highway leading to my parents farm is how I found out that, yes, Mom’s 2002 Passat 1.8T wagon WILL do 139 mph surprisingly easily) and you didn’t do dumb shit where other people were and the cops were likely to be lurking.
That sensibility has seemingly got completely out the window with Gen Z. But we can largely blame that on smart phones and touchscreens, TBH.
As to what I’d buy for my crotch goblin if I had one in the modern day: I think there’s a decent balance between safety features + good fuel economy and buying something that they can see out of and aren’t likely to get into too much trouble with.
My Top 10 Choices for a New Teen Driver in the 5-10k range in no particular order:
2010-2012 Fusion/Milan/MKZ
2014-2017 Mazda 3
2009-2014 Camry
2008-2015 Rav4
2010-2016 CR-V
2014-2017 Impala
2010-2015 Avalon
2013-2020 Outlander/Outlander Sport
2011-2015 Jetta/Jetta Sportwagen (with the K07 I5 engine, specifically)
2013-2016 CX-5
2010-2016 Prius
All of these cars have good safety ratings, are reliable, powerful enough to get out of their own way without being too race-car capable (with perhaps the exception of a Rav4/Camry/Avalon V6, those are quite quick for what they are), and get decent to exceptional fuel economy, and are affordable to insure for younger drivers.
I’d limit those choices to the 4cyl versions. Those still have plenty of power to get in trouble with but less than the V6s.
I’d also add the Altima. Its a good, safe, reliable and fuel efficient car despite its reputation.
Not only the 4-cyl versions, but the small 4-cyl; get the 2.0L for the Mazda3.
Agreed on the Altima.
Maybe. There doesn’t seem to be any meaningful fuel economy advantage with the 2.0 though.
Three mpg is three mpg.
But we weren’t talking about the fuel economy, we were talking about power, and the 2.0 is far more manageable by a dumb kid.
Yeh a 2.5 Mazda 3 is actually kind of a peppy car, iirc 0-60 is as fast as most of the older sporty cars I’ve had over the years.
Having just gone from a ’14 Mazda3 2.0L to a ’15 Mazda6 2.5L, I believe it. That same engine in a car 200 pounds lighter is undoubtedly a lot of fun.
“Three mpg is three mpg.”
According to the EPA they are exactly the same (minus a rounding error in favor of the 2.5):
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=46352&id=46353
“But we weren’t talking about the fuel economy, we were talking about power, and the 2.0 is far more manageable by a dumb kid.”
This is plausible. That said my niece was given a Mazda 3 as her first car. She immediately rear ended someone at the airport curb totalling the car because she was looking at her phone. I dunno which engine that 3 had (it didn’t last long enough for me to ask) but I doubt it would have made a difference.
No one was talking about 2023 vehicles. Here’s something relevant:
Compare Side-by-Side
I currently an example of each of those two engines, so trust me, the power increase is very noticeable.
No one was NOT talking about 2023 vehicles either. Why would those be off the table, especially when it might be a good buy as a lease return or hand me down as mom or dad upgrades to a 2026 model?
Because we were both responding to someone who’d specifically mentioned the 2014-17 Mazda3? Sheesh.
I’m from a similar vintage and I remember a high school parking lot full of mostly crap cans. The kids whose parents actually bought them cars were far and away the minority. Most of us had to buy the car, pay for the insurance, and put the gas in it. Made for many vehicles with questionable road legality, but rough ugly wheels were better than no wheels.
I went to a rich school in New England. Very few NEW cars, but lots of 3-4yo hand-me-down Volvos, Saabs, and Plywood Pleasure Palaces. My car was a 4yo hand-me-down Subaru, though initially I was driving the Old Man’s 2yo Olds 98 every day. He preferred his Suburban. I preferred the Subaru, LOL.
TWO decades? The 40th anniversary of my driver’s license is in a couple of weeks. How the Hell did that happen?
But FOR sure, it is a damned good thing that cameras were not a thing when I was a teenager.
I still remember how I drove as a teen, and how a lot of teens/inexperienced drivers drive in general.
Regardless of vehicle size, what teens need is less horsepower.
It’s a lot harder to get into trouble when you have the acceleration of a mighty Tortoise.
Driver’s Ed is highly recommended. And my daughter is going to get plenty of snowy parking lot practice to handle slides and low traction.
5speed manual F150 was the laziest vehicle I’ve driven.
All cars should come with three-foot long floor shifters, and gearing for towing.
This also kind of applies to off roading. I have seen too many young guys that buy the lifted fully modified rubicons on 37-40 in tires, and still cannot drive off road worth a damn and us old guys who started on old open diffs jeeps on 30 in all terrains can smoke them off road. They just did not earn the skills yet.
Start off driving shitboxes, and you’ll pick up better skills. When it’s your only mode of transport, you’ll have to learn how to get a FWD hatchback through deep snow.
“Do you want them to survive their first accident…”
Ouch, not a fan of that mindset. I hope I’m not involved in someone’s “first” accident on my way to work today. I want to live too.
Weapons vs armor – no one wins
This is a very timely post, Mercedes. I’m taking my son to get his temps this afternoon. He’ll be doing his learning in my wife’s Outback, because our other cars are sticks and he’s not ready for that. Yet.
Honestly, a 15/16 year old child has no business operating any car/CUV/pick-up on public roads.
At that age, children in the US aren’t considered mature enough to vote, sign up for the military, drink a beer, visit a casino, watch an entire category of films, but they are mysteriously mature enough to operate motor vehicles!?
Makes no sense.
I bed to differ.
I began driving a 1976 Ford Supercab long bed at age 15 (“hardship license”), driving on public roads, and passing my driving test in it. Even pulling a loaded 16′ trailer at age 16 with it, on public roads, once I earned my regular license.
Responsibility and maturity varies. Depends on the investments of active parents. Yep, I’m older, yet actively teaching their children shouldn’t be ignored by those procreating today.
My late mother had her driver license for 76 years, probably starting with a farm truck at 14.
The problem is as with so much of this stuff in the USA there is not a viable transportation alternative besides their parents giving them a ride making owning a car near essential to having a job or transitioning into adult life. It’s the same problem with the elderly.
If you have the money, I always thought a three year old car medium sized car with a motor of under 100 Hp was safest. Big enough with good excelle electronic brake and trajectory control, but not fast enough for stupid overtaking…
Of course now, the weight of hybrid or electric batteries makes all cars more dangerous for people in them and others.
Where are you going to find a three year old, medium sized car with a motor of under 100 hp now?
Pull a couple spark plug wires. 🙂
DIY AFM.
I love it.
Europe?
Maybe. The OT is more of a North American issue though.
I dunno, I’ve seen an Excursion and two Suburbans in France. They’re out there!
And it’s not a maybe, they’re plentiful there.
Last time I was in Europe, I was a bit surprised by how many BroDozers I saw. Probably mostly US servicefolk, I hope. Wasn’t nearly as many as here, of course, but ANY at those prices for gas and taxes is surprising.
I’ve seen a full on douchebro lifted RAM pickup in Sweden of all places. So I know Europe has such vehicles but I certainly wouldn’t say they are plentiful and I doubt many teens are driving them.
Have you ever heard of jokes?
Have you ever gotten a laugh?
Putting an inexperienced driver into a large vehicle is utterly absurd.
The big car for young or old drivers idea has been around for years I remember a radio ad from a Chevy dealer in the early 90s pushing the Caprice for your kids and parents. Our kids learned late which may have helped. While our son learned to drive in a Saturn SL2 at 18, his first car was a 2003 Buick LeSabre which survived his college years and is now his sister’s ride. Neither has been in a crash unlike some of their friends.
We’re surrounded by big trucks here in Flyover Country, but we still went with the Chevy Spark for my daughter’s high school car, partially because it was a stick shift and partially because by the time she had her license I pretty-much trusted her to drive whatever and go wherever.
By the time she was 16 she had driven a ’94 Cadillac Fleetwood, a ’99 F-250, an ’82 Jaguar XJ6, a ’00 Jaguar XK8, a ’12 Chevy Volt, an ’87 Corvette (the first car she bought), a ’71 Cadillac Sedan deVille, and the first car she ever drove at 12 years old – a 1966 Chevy Biscayne with a 3-on-the-tree. I started her off with that as I figured if she could drive a cantankerous carbureted beast with a nearly non-existent stick shift, she could drive pretty-much everything going forward.
One of the things Iowa has going for it is the ability to skip the rather over-priced driver’s ed classes and enroll in a parents-teaching version. We did that, kept the proper log-book and I had her drive those different cars in all sorts of different conditions. We went out in the night, winter, rain, fog, anything that was would prove to be a good lesson. Two-lane blacktops, four-lanes, and gravel. It helped that she got a job at a restaurant around 15 miles away and with her learner’s permit was able to drive there several times a week with myself or my wife in the passenger seat.
When the big day arrived, she passed her test in the ’14 Spark with flying colors and while there were two instructors riding along, she was the only one who knew how to drive a manual. Two days after that she got to drive solo six hours to Road America with myself following in the ’82 XJ6 in order to run her C4 Corvette in the parade laps before the IMSA main event that weekend. We’ve now made that trip three years in a row.
It has been an amazing journey, and at this point I’m still not concerned with the size of the vehicle she’s in, I’m just happy she’s learned a lot, has a good deal of wheel-time, and I’ve gotten to be there for a good portion of it.