Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1512734
12 OPINION maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 3 DECEMBER 2023 BUT before we turn to the REAL reasons, behind this astonishingly harebrained (even by EU standards) initiative by the European Commission… let's a take a brief look at the OFFICIAL justification, shall we? 'Road safety'. Yes, folks, you read that right! Believe it or not, the European Commission recently proposed (and the Council of Minister subsequently ap- proved) a whole new directive – to be applied across all 27 member states – to 'lower the legal driving age to 17'… and the only excuse we were given, to justify this madness, was that it would somehow 'increase safety on European roads'. I mean, honestly. It almost makes 'the dog ate my homework' look like a perfect- ly plausible scenario, doesn't it? Because let's face it: dogs HAVE occasionally been known to ingest all sorts of highly unlike- ly things, from time to time – including, in at least one well-documented case, an entire sofa (cushions, and all) – but… '17-year-old-drivers, making roads safer to drive on'? Where, in the entire known Universe, has something like THAT ever been known to happen? The short answer, it seems, is: 'absolute- ly nowhere'. Because while Malta is mer- cifully not among their number (or not yet, anyway); there ARE a few countries, dotted around the world, which were un- wise enough to issue driving licences to teenagers as young as 16-17… and, who would have ever guessed? The results have not exactly been very 'encouraging', you know. In the USA, for instance, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reports that "drivers between the ages of 16 and 17 are more likely to be involved in car accidents than drivers from any other age group. Additionally, teen drivers cause more in- juries and deaths than other drivers, in- cluding injuries to themselves." And according to the CDC (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention), "the risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among teens aged 16–19 than among any other age group. Teen drivers in this age group have a fatal crash rate almost three times as high as drivers ages 20 and older per mile driven…" But tell you what: let's not waste too much time, over-analysing an 'official' justification that we all know is really just a load of bullshit, anyway. The reality, of course, is that neither the European Commission, nor the Council of Ministers, is daft enough to genuinely BELIEVE that this directive will actually 'work', in practice… for the same reason that nobody else does, either. And that, by the way, includes pret- ty much all Europe's own traffic safety associations: which this week wrote an open letter, urging EU governments "to reject moves to lower the age at which young people can begin training to drive a heavy-duty vehicle, arguing it could lead to higher numbers of serious road acci- dents…" Clearly, then, this proposal cannot pos- sibly have been intended to 'increase road safety', as claimed… and something tells me we won't have to look very far, to dis- cover the real reasons behind it. This (like the previous quote) is from an article on Euractiv.com (December 1 2023): "Industry says that lowering the recommended age is vital to stemming Europe's severe shortage of truck drivers, rejecting claims that putting teenagers behind the wheel of trucks and buses is unsafe. […] International Road Transport Union data suggests that the continent faced a shortage of 600,000 drivers in 2022, with the figure expected to rise to almost 2 million by 2026." Aha! That's a whole different story, isn't it? (And a somewhat more PLAUSIBLE one, at that!) But just in case the naked truth still re- mains a little 'clouded' (possibly, due to a sudden increase in vehicular fumes, all over Europe)… allow me to spell it out to you, in a few simple words. What REALLY happened, it seems, is that various sectors of Europe's belea- guered automotive industry have done a little good-old-fashioned 'lobbying', be- hind our backs, with both the European Commission and the Council of Minis- ters… … you know: the same sort of 'lobbying' that – last I looked – the EU was supposed to have REGULATED, since Qatargate (Just saying, that's all)… … for the same old, indefensible reasons that ALL lobbyists exert pressure on in- ternational legislative entities (which also happens to be the same reason why they were supposed to have been regulated, in the first place: because they secure unfair advantages, for themselves...] In the case of Europe's truck-drivers lobby, the intention was very clearly to address the aforementioned 'shortage of 600,000 drivers'… by simply 'allow- ing teenagers to drive trucks, across the EU' (and to hell with any of the dire con- sequences, predicted by all European road-safety associations…) And in the case of Europe's automotive manufacturing industries – including, but not limited to, the most beleaguered of the lot: Germany's crisis-ridden Volkswa- gen – the intention emerges just as clearly from this other news article… this time, from CNN (August 27): "Industrial production in Europe's big- gest economy fell 1.5% in June compared with May, driven by a 3.5% drop in Ger- many's vast automotive sector. The de- cline in German industrial output, much steeper than forecast by economists, raises the risk that the manufacturing heavyweight will contract again later this year, potentially falling back into reces- sion. "[…] The German car industry, which accounts for around 5% of the economy, is struggling to recover from the blow dealt by the pandemic and snarled supply chains…" "[…] Volkswagen, Europe's largest car- maker, has been grappling with sluggish sales in China — its single biggest mar- ket — losing out to local competitors. The company reported a 14.5% drop in its deliveries in China in the first quarter. It saw a recovery in April and May but de- liveries in the first half overall were still 1.2% down on the same period in 2022…" Why does the EU want to lower the driving age to 17? To boost Europe's automotive industry, of course… Raphael Vassallo