Sixteen year-olds are being allowed to get behind the wheel if they’re on disability benefits. The Telegraph has the story:
Children in their mid-teens can start driving before everyone else if they are claiming the enhanced mobility component of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) benefit.
The normal minimum age for obtaining a provisional driving licence is 17, but the law allows certain disabled children to begin a year early.
Some of those teenagers can claim free driving lessons from the taxpayer-funded Motability scheme – but only if they are on the higher rate of PIP and are also receiving a means-tested benefit. …
Mental health conditions can qualify teenagers for early access to provisional and full driving licences, the Mail on Sunday reported. Eligibility rules cover conditions such as anxiety, ADHD, depression and agoraphobia.
According to the Department for Work and Pensions, a 16 year-old qualifies if their mental health “causes overwhelming psychological distress” that prevents them from completing a journey on foot or by public transport.
Official data analysed by the Telegraph in 2024 found that a record number of 16 year-olds – more than 1,300 – held full driving licences at the time, giving them the right to drive without adult supervision.
More than nine in 10 of those 1,363 teenagers were male, while almost 100 had already received penalty points on their licences.
Worth reading in full.
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“if their mental health “causes overwhelming psychological distress” that prevents them from completing a journey on foot or by public transport”, or quite simply, they can’t be arsed.
I’m still amazed that the British government is surely the only government in the world that HANDS OUT FREE CARS.
Those those who don’t function mentally can operate heavy machinery, I think I’ve just solved the road problem just take all the most mentally dysfunctional teenagers and stick them on heavy plant! Sorted.
F@ ck is all I can say.
I’ve not long retired from driving instructing. 16-year old kids in receipt of higher rate disability allowance have been allowed to drive and take their tests for at least as long as I did that job.
The difference between now and when this exception was introduced, is now every chancer and scrounger out there wants to be, or wants their kids to be, diagnosed with something – anything – which gives them an entitlement to free money.
We get the system the public vote for. Everyone who voted LibLabConGrn voted for this.
One of the many bottomless wells the government are determined to try and fill up with taxpayers money.
No one with a disabling mental health condition should be allowed to drive at all.
they are a danger to themselves as well as other people.
mental health problems should not qualify people for pip. Pip is for people who physically cannot get around without help, but are perfectly able to work if supported by some help.
now, it’s just seen as a top up to the already generous benefit system that believes every self report it gets.
Just what we need … mentally ill teenagers behind the wheels of what can be a lethal machine.
And what an incentive for a 16 yr old lad (it’ll be mostly lads) to “put on a performance” and claim to have ADHD and anxiety.
The morons who come up with these policies should be locked up.
More than half a century ago in the US, all teenagers were encouraged to get their provisional driver’s permit at age 15, because all publicly funded state schools offered free driving lessons as part of the curriculum, in which a professional driving instructor taught 4 students at a time: 1 driving and 3 watching from the back seat. (Seat belts were not mandatory for drivers or passengers until 1984, so they could all lean forward easily, but had to keep quiet and pay attention, so as not to distract the young driver). Each of them got to take their turn behind the wheel, at first in a large empty car park, and the lessons went on once a week for the whole school year in all weathers, driving on the local streets and roads, interspersed with class instruction.
Boys and girls learned how to handle the car skidding or fishtailing on ice, how to keep one car length behind other vehicles on a motorway for every 10 miles per hour of speed, how to park, how to change a tyre in the snow, how to check the oil and radiator and other useful things. By age 16 or so, they… Read more »
Well, in France, the theory tests of ASSR1 and ASSR2 are done in schools. They stage and mark the tests and issue certificates.
And yes, I often see parents and children jerking, squealing and bouncing around the local supermarket car parks.
Of course, having already been a PDI in north London for a year, my lessons for my 15 and 13 year olds feature neither jerking, squealing nor bouncing.
And from the age of 14 you can ride a moped and a VSP (Voiture Sans Permis), which are jolly, noisy little two stroke things that seldom go above 25mph, even downhill, which are favoured most by those who either never received a licence or who lost them, either through misdemeanour or the symptoms of advancing years.
A moped! Brilliant.
I had to look up a VSP, and was shocked that it’s an actual car, as I can imagine it being driven by a Third World Ethnic with no concept of French traffic rules, and a mind for Vehicular Jihad. They could still do a lot of damage in that, even at 25 MPH.
One more thing the collectively retarded British public will shrug at, mumbling how it’s not quite right… on their way to the voting booth to vote for the party they’ve always voted for.
Fifteen year old Daughter asks,
“Does this include Down’s Syndrome??”
Here in France, teenagers use trisomique and autiste openly as insults. 😆
That’s funny! We used to say “spastic” or “spaz” with accompanying movements, insulting each other. It was fun.
We did this too. Teachers would giggle a bit and then gently shake their heads with a sigh and raising their eyes they would walk off to check for smokers behind the bike shed and behind the conifers along one side of the rugby pitch. Ah, yes, it seems a long way off.
Happy days … 🙂
One of the funniest things I saw as a child was standing on the fly over of the new motorway, after having pulled the instrument panel of a JCB off (as they had destroyed our woods to build it) was two spaz chariots (invacars) racing up the road below side by side, flat out. We laughed till we cried.
Johnny Deacon was another insult after a boy with cerebral palsy who frequently appeared on Blue Peter although we never said it in front of teachers.
Jokes about Pakis (why did the Romans build straight roads? So the Pakis couldn’t open corner shops. What do you call a Paki who doesn’t smell? Asif) were acceptable in the playground but got a mild rebuke from my parents.
Definitely happy days.
Come on Matt, it was Joey Deacon!
Happy Days..
Good old days
How come so many people can’t hold down their schooling, college or jobs. Maybe, just maybe getting money for nothing and public steam above those who work might just be something to do with it.
Call it an incentive.
How does someone with severe anxiety cope with taking a driving test?
What happens to someone with severe depression if they fail a driving test?
How can someone with severe ADHD sit still or pay attention long enough to learn to drive?
Or have all these kids been diagnosed with conditions when 15-20 years ago they would of been assessed as being within a “normal” range that takes into account the fact that everyone’s different?
How would the ‘anxious ones’ cope with a bit of road rage, or a puncture miles from home?
They wont have to even pass a test. Failure is the new success. Someone else will be allowed to do it for them.
How did we sink so low? And who are the people that promote this.
So if it’s OK for them to drive, why is it not OK for ALL 16 year olds to drive?
Far too logical a question. Stand in the corner.
What the normal, well adjusted, polite well brought up ones? Nah, your ‘avin a laugh guv….
So 16-year-old nutters are allowed to drive – it’s madness gone mad!
And Labour wants to give them the vote.
But block their social media access.
Cos they need to be kept safe… but can vote and drive… hmmmm