Young drivers | People don’t buy mopeds when it’s so easy to get behind the wheel of a car – and then it starts to rattle

July saturday night ended darkly when the car veered off the roadway into the bank. The driver had lost control of the car on a road section where the speed limit was 60 kilometers per hour. At normal speeds, the road is not dangerous.

It was a little past four on Sunday morning. The young people’s car was speeding to the right-hand corner. At high speed, the bend becomes steep.

The car was completely wrecked in the accident. Two 17-year-olds who were on board were injured and had to be hospitalized, but their condition was stable after the accident.

The 17-year-old driver who was driving the car with a special permit died in the accident.

A passenger car the age exemption permits granted to 17-year-olds for driving licenses have grown in popularity year by year since the conditions of the permit were eased with the reform of the Driving License Act that entered into force in 2018.

A few years ago, the government at the time planned new changes to the driver’s license law, whereby only the guardian’s permission would be needed to obtain an exemption permit. The law change caused a lot of discussion and was ultimately not implemented in that form.

In 2023, approximately 20,400 exemption permits were granted. Out of the entire age group, 29 percent drove with an exempt driver’s license.

This year, age exemption permits had already been granted more than 14,000 times by July.

Major some of those who applied for an exemption permit from the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom will receive a permit. During the new law, less than 4,000 negative decisions have been issued. More than 90 percent of applicants receive an exemption permit.

Traficom has previously criticized the process of granting an exception permit, as they have no means of evaluating the effects of the permit on traffic safety. Traficom can only decide whether the applicant’s needs meet the conditions of the exception permit.

Conditions for granting an exception permit can be, for example, long distances or missing public transport connections, which regularly make it difficult to get to school, work, training at the workplace or a regular and goal-oriented hobby. The reason may also be the applicant’s health reasons, which make it difficult or prevent regular travel.

There are big differences between the provinces in the number of exemptions.

The shares of age exception permits have increased especially in South Ostrobothnia, Satakunta, Kainuu and Lapland.

In 2022, up to 60 percent in South Ostrobothnia drove with a card already at the age of 17, according to Traficom’s data.

In young people drivers have an increased risk of getting into a traffic accident. For example, near-miss situations had happened most to drivers who had obtained their driver’s license with a learner’s permit and were 17–18 years old.

Similarly, the number of notices, traffic fines and fines received by drivers with an age exemption license was on average higher than other age groups. The data comes from Traficom’s monitoring study of new drivers.

Traffic deaths of young people have been in the headlines this year, as an exceptionally large number of people under the age of 15 have died in traffic.

Police has previously statedthat 17-year-olds are partly over-represented, especially in cases of carjacking, i.e. serious endangerment of traffic safety. The situation has slightly improved in recent years, but a clear downward trend in traffic behavior cannot be seen based on police statistics.

Traficom specialist Riikka Rajamäki according to the situation of those with exceptional permits has generally leveled off in recent years, both in terms of the acquisition of permits and accidents.

Accident statistics for young people reveal one phenomenon of this generation: fewer young people get a moped card anymore, instead the first to jump behind the wheel of a car.

While in 2016 clearly more than half of the 17-year-olds who were seriously injured in traffic were riding mopeds, in 2021 cars and vans took the first place in accidents.

According to Rajamäki, one of the explanatory factors for the spike in the statistics of 17-year-old car drivers is that a driver’s license is often obtained when there is a big need. Therefore, in the first year of driving, many kilometers are accumulated, and breakdowns also occur.

Last year, 17-year-old car drivers were involved in four accidents that resulted in death and 76 injuries. Four people died and 127 were injured in these accidents.

Although the statistics show that the accident risk for young drivers is still high, there has also been a positive development in traffic. Last year, fewer young people died in road traffic compared to the average of the last four years. In particular, the number of deaths of young car drivers decreased.

Now, however, it seems that the year 2024 will go down in the statistics as a grim figure for young people’s traffic deaths.