There has been quite a few accidents that have gotten media attention lately. Sweden is not really used to teens killing themselves or others in traffic (overall we have something like 2.3 traffic deaths/100.000 inhabitants), so there is an ongoing investigation regarding rules and security regulations regarding (EP)A-traktors.
Personally I hope they get banned, because I am pretty tired of being passed on my morning commute by often multiple (EP)A-traktors going 100km/h on a 70 km/h road, driven by someone without a driver's licence.
That is the reality. Not the romaticism in the article.
I don't live in Sweden, but in Northern Norway and go to Umeå, Skellefteå, Luleå etc a lot, and I have to agree that these are actually an absolute menace.
I am personally a car person and absolutely love the idea of an EPA in general but I've seen both crashes from them going dangerously slow (30kph on E4an, a motorway where everyone does 120-150kph) and also 250-300kph trying to outrun the police because it's a 15 year old that panics when they see the police because they were going slightly over 30kph, and conclude that flooring their overtuned Volvo 740 and escaping the police is the only thing they can try to not get a license suspension when they become 18.
I've seen some extreme builds way past 500hp too, but those tend to be more show car type builds.
You can actually quite reliably get 450-500hp out of a 2.3 redblock without even spending that much money, redblocks are notorious in tuning communities for this, almost like the 2JZ of Sweden
240kmph is where the gearing ends on a 740 iirc. The biggest engine is a 2.3l turbo that makes 170 hp stock. however, very little work goes into getting it to 300hp. Upgraded turbo, clutch, injectors and an off the shelf chip tune that you simply slot in. Past 300hp and you're looking at beefier rods and most definitely transmission upgrade or a non existent third gear.
I find this hard to believe for a different reason. Your average car becomes quite hard to control at 160kph ish (barring a completely straight stretch of road). I cannot see a 15 year old surviving any instance of going over 250kph, much less something described as ‘escaping from the police’.
I had an old 240 with the naturally aspirated B230. Going 160 kph was not really a big issue, of course not in a tight corner, but OK on regular open roads in Sweden. But 250 kph is pushing the limits for sure.
And I think you're actually agreeing with GP here, since the outcome of those attempted escapes are typically fatal accidents rather than teen escaping.
All else being equal (initial engineering and handling), an older car has a lot more wear and play in the suspension components. If you haven't spent much time under a car, there's a surprising amount of rubber there in the form of bushings.
Over time, the rubber loses its resilience, and doesn't keep things located as they should be for best handling.
Metal on metal pivots wear as well, springs get less springy, dampers degrade in damping ability, etc.
You're unlikely to notice at regular speeds, apart from getting in a new car and the handling feeling sharper. I presume at high speed and under the sorts of maneuvers one might try as a teenager doing teenager things, the results could vary.
For sure a friend of mine had a very old EPA, it would be about 70 years today if it still exists. It could not go faster than 50kph because the handling combined with imbalance in something almost shook it off the road while going "straight".
Mostly because fat sidewalls and suspension tuning that prioritized comfort over having a lap time .04sec less than whatever other mom-mobile the Consumer Reports journalist is comparing yours to.
In the UK I'm pretty sure you'd get pulled over by the police for doing 30kph on the motorway, it's reckless driving and you're putting yourself and others in danger.
Especially since those are the least experienced drivers. I wonder how 18-21 drivers look in countries with a higher age.
Though one way to look at it is that a teen driver today is just as safe/dangerous as an average driver 20 years ago, much safer than an average driver 30 years ago, and over twice as safe as an average driver 40 years ago. At least as far as fatalities go.
In the U.S., 18–21 year olds cannot legally drink, either: the federal government withholds highway funds from any state which has a drinking age less than 21, so they all raised their drinking ages.
Car safety ratings in the USA do not test for safety of people outside of the car. Otherwise the vast majority of modern pickups and SUVs would not pass those tests, primarily due to the increased hood heights. See NHTSA[0] for info.
Andrew Gounardes, a NYS senator, attempted to push through a bill that would require additional ‘pedestrian safety’ ratings be posted for vehicles for sale in the state[1]. But otherwise, I don’t know any other state that has any safety ratings for people outside of the vehicles in the US
I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Pedestrian injuries and fatalities in the USA are up higher than they were since the 90s[0]. Just because it’s now safer to be a driver or occupant in a car doesn’t mean everyone is safer as a result.
Feel free to cite some sources and specify what you mean by a small fraction... The United states is large and I can point to several areas where pedestrian and cyclist injuries and fatalities are not a small fraction. They tend to be where people are allowed to walk and bike and not just areas where it's only legal or feasible to drive.
> The average crash kills more occupants than pedestrians
In the United States, that is by design. Besides a handful of primarily coastal cities, you cannot legally or feasibly bike or walk in many places.
> I don't think pedestrians are a reason to say teens shouldn't drive.
I can't find anywhere in this thread that anyone was making a claim that teens shouldn't be able to drive. I believe people were saying we shouldn't allow people who are, statistically speaking, the least capable of driving safely to drive just because they'll be safer if they crash. We shouldn't lower our already extremely low bar for driving standards just because cars are getting bigger and occupants are more likely to survive when they run into a person or a tree.
I'd be perfectly fine with a driving age of 16, as long as the license was limited to vehicles that were under a specific size/weight and our driving standards and tests were greatly improved... With states like Georgia moving ahead with allowing anyone to get a license only with parental approval[0], I have no faith in things getting any better.
> I can't find anywhere in this thread that anyone was making a claim that teens shouldn't be able to drive.
To be clear I meant "under 18" there when I said "teens", because that's the group for which the law differs by country. "teenage minors" is normally what that word means to me.
So specifically, the chain of conversation went like this:
"The issue is that 15 year olds are just that, 15 year old kids. "
"How come 16 year old kids can drive just fine in the US?"
I very much read that as talking about whether teens are a hazard and should be able to drive, deliberately making a comparison to 18+ rules in Sweden.
"They can't. [...] Sixteen- to 19-year-olds represent 3.9% of licensed drivers, but account for 8.6% of drivers in all crashes and 6.0% of drivers in fatal crashes."
That continues the same comparison. Then I argued that the total rate of fatalities has been dropping tremendously, so teens these days are less of a hazard than non-teens in decades past.
> I believe people were saying we shouldn't allow people who are, statistically speaking, the least capable of driving safely to drive just because they'll be safer if they crash.
Do you mean Aeolun's comment? It's definitely not what I meant and nobody replied to that comment. So I don't think that's what the conversation was about.
> We shouldn't lower our already extremely low bar for driving standards just because cars are getting bigger and occupants are more likely to survive when they run into a person or a tree.
I'm not sure which age bar you're talking about, but honestly it depends on what you're trying to optimize for. And it's not just occupants surviving more. People in other cars survive more, and if you look back at the same years pedestrians survive more too! In the last few years the pedestrian fraction of vehicle deaths has been 16-17% of 1.15 deaths per hundred million miles, and in the late 70s it was 16-17% of 3.3 deaths per hundred million miles. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
The improvement is less if you go per capita instead of per 100 million miles, but it's still a big improvement.
And yes I'm aware that pedestrian deaths hit a low point and have been rising in the last few years, which is a real problem, but they're still significantly lower than they used to be.
The reporting rate for collisions has gone up which confounds that measurement
Back in the day when costs were lower it was much more common to reconcile things without involving third parties and the legal requirements for max damage in low speed collisions were much more stringent.
The risk of young drivers can be mitigated by more rigorous driving tests, and also driver monitoring of risky drivers (check for patterns of sudden braking, speeding, things like that) by insurers.
But driving in the US is much, much easier than most of Europe.
Like a small city in Calfornia vs. Barcelona was a world of difference. The US has lots of wide, straight roads instead of the nightmare of one-way streets, bus lanes, bike lanes, mopeds and motorcycles etc. in Europe.
As an American currently living in Europe, who has driven in almost every US state and over half the countries in the EU, I don't fully agree. Driving in the US may be easier in the sense of requiring less cognitive load most of the time, but that doesn't translate into lower risk.
The challenges are different, but the probability of a fatal collision is higher in the US, whether per person or per vehicle, than in most EU countries. This doesn't surprise me, and it's not just due to driver training.
Navigating small streets built before cars is very likely to lead to broken side mirrors and scratched paint, but not injury or death. Misusing a bus lane gets you angry honking and gesturing from bus drivers and maybe a ticket from the police, but not injured or killed. A low-speed car-on-moped collision is bad of course, but not as bad as a car on one of those wide, straight American roads running a red light at 60 MPH and crashing into your driver's door at a right angle.
Here's a study with evidence that very wide lanes result in people driving faster and crashing more frequently, a particularly bad combination for safety.
Personally I hope they get banned, but for the opposite reason. Them only being able to do 30 km/h leads to insane queues on some 70 km/h roads I regularly use, with dangerous overtaking as a result.
I wonder where people get the illusion that "roads" are reserved for cars which can go at arbitrary high speeds. Roads are for any kind of vehicles, many of those cannot go very fast. Start with real tractors, which used to go no faster than 25 kph, some of them now go 40 or 50, but that's it. A driver of a car has to be able to safely cope with slow traffic. Of course there are plenty more, like bicyclists, horse carriots and on the country side often even pedestrians.
I can understand that slow traffic can be quite annoying, but calling it a safety hazard puts the blame on the wrong party.
There are rules for all road users in most countries. Rules for pedestrians govern where and when they may cross roads, and usually prohibit walking in lanes designated for faster moving vehicles. Busier or faster streets tend to have rules that impose more separation between pedestrians, cyclists, and cars, and blame for a collision usually falls on whoever violates them.
This is partly for safety of course, but it is also intended to support throughput. People and goods do not flow easily in cities where trucks move at walking speeds.
I can talk only about Germany. If there are sidewalks, pedestrians have to use them, also if there are special assigned bike paths, they have to be used too. But where those features are missing, both pedestrians and bicyclists have to use the road - unless it is marked as a motor way. And of course a road can only be marked as a motor way, if there are alternative ways to reach the same destination for the prohibited vehicles.
Slow traffic is absolutely fine, if you can actually identify it as slow traffic.
Just by looking at tractors, cyclists and pedestrians you know they are not going very fast, but a car going 20mph where the limit is 50mph is insanely dangerous because your brain instinctually thinks the car is going about as fast as you are and you have to get quite close to pickup the speed difference.
Here in Denmark you can get a fine for going too slow, it's called being an unnecessary nuisance.
Sorry, a car can go slow for many good reasons not visible to the following traffic (and be it only, that something in front of that car is slow, but you cannot see it). You have to be prepared to that. A car can even be entirely stopped and you should be able to stop without hitting it. Failing to do so is entirely the fault of the following traffic.
It is an entirely different matter, that one isn't allowed to drive unnecessarily slow to not block the following traffic. This is about the traffic flow, not of safety.
In the UK, slow moving vehicles, including tractors, are prohibited on motorways (as are cyclists and pedestrians). They are allowed on other high-speed roads though.
Yes, but those "tractors" would be prohibited as well. The motor ways in Germany are only for vehicles which can drive 60kph or more. I guess the law is similar in Sweden.
These are classified as "agricultural equipment", and as such they of course have access to most of the road network (not major highways) and do not need to go fast. Only "unnecessary obstruction" of traffic is illegal, "obstruction for reasonable cause" is perfectly fine.
The thing that annoys me is that there is not even cursory control that these cars are used in connection with agriculture. It was fine in the past, because it was relatively rare that the regulation was abused. After a recent change in the law that made it cheap/easy to convert regular cars, it has become a menace.
Being able to drive those >30km/h is already illegal. IME enforcement of that that is lax.
Still, I hope you took down the plate number(s) and reported it.
The case you’re talking about is a very very small minority and that driver would probably drive a car illegally if they didn’t have access to an (EP)A.
The vast majority of vehicles in this class is unable to go 100km/h.
Judging by the article's pictures most of them don't have a rear plate at all so it's probably not required. That would make reporting it a lot more difficult.
They need to have a front-plate due to being classified as tractors. I would find it reasonable to introduce a new requirement for these vehicles (nb: not all tractors) to need a rear plate to make reporting of incidents easier.
That being said, I would find it likely that the local police would already be aware of these hooligans and where to find them.
Real tractors are big vehicles - it's not hard to find somewhere to mount a small plate. All road-going tractors in the UK will have both front and rear plates - you can see it in this photo just below the cab:
That's not quite my point - you asked where would you mount a rear plate on a tractor, to which I answered that there are lots of places. If you're talking about the fact that plates can be obscured by large trailers etc then local laws will dictate that there is a plate on the trailer. I guess plates covered by attachments (ploughs etc) are a slightly different case and may obscure the plate.
In Germany, any motor vehicle which can go faster than 6kph has to carry some kind of license plate, depending on the category of the vehicle. Even eScooters do. For those, and for slow motor bikes, this is issued by the insurance company, as insurance is also mandatory for any motor vehicle, for most others it is issued by the transport authority.
A few photos show vehicles with no license plate in the rear. You'll notice those vehicles aren't shown from the front, so you don't see the plate they most probably have there -- since that, unlike having one at the rear, is required by law.
Up until very recently EPA-traktors were exempt from the yearly mandatory vehicle inspections of cars. This meant all controls were "in the field" where discovering the various changes can be hard.
It has been somewhat of a sport to find new sneaky ways to make the cars go fast and/or quickly lock and unlock the car with a hidden lever.
And most of the cars are in rural areas with little police presence. Outside of urban areas sweden is very sparsely populated. My parents live out in bum-fudge nowhere with something like 2 people per square km. Up there every other 15 year old has an EPA-traktor.
In this case $X is a hastily modified car, which should do 30 KM/H going 100 KM/H, on a 70 KM/H road, driven by a 15 year old, without a driver's license.
Banning doesn't always means "changing the law so that it's outright impossible". Increasing enforcement, and making bending the law impractical is also a form of banning.
In Netherlands, there are scooters allowed to go in bike lanes, and their top speed is limited to 40 KM/H. Some people circumvent this by installing aftermarket clutch sets.
Police have portable dynos which fit into their trunks, and if they find that your scooter can go faster, the fine you and require you to un-modify your scooter and verify it with the police.
This enforcement is strict and is an effective way of "banning" circumvented scooters. I also think the same thing: Increase enforcement, make it impractical to have fast (EP)A-Tractors.
The point isn't just that it's annoying, it's that it's dangerous. That's pretty obvious from their comment:
> Personally I hope they get banned, because I am pretty tired of being passed on my morning commute by often multiple (EP)A-traktors going 100km/h on a 70 km/h road, driven by someone without a driver's licence.
Does that sound at all safe to you? Why should someone have the freedom to endanger others on public roads?
> Personally I hope they get banned, because I am pretty tired of being passed on my morning commute by often multiple horseless carriages going 30km/h on a 10 km/h horse-only road, driven by someone without a horse permit.
sounds like progress
also sounds like something I wouldnt want my own kids doing / sharing the public road with
I am likewise often disturbed by kneejerk authoritarian responses especially how they have increased in my lifetime, but not as much when it comes to bad unlicensed drivers, driving is dangerous and not given nearly enough respect and I’m fine with reasonable restrictions on it.
It has nothing to do with it being "annoying" and therefore they want it banned. That's a stupid strawman, as someone that has been here that long you should know better than to discuss like that.
The point is that it's dangerous, potentially lethal, for them and others. That's why they want a ban. Not because of some authoritarian reflex..
Settle down, Ayn Rand. The law in obviously not working as intended due to change of the times (originally it was meant to make it easier for farmers to have an extra vehicle, not for inner city teenagers to cruise around). A revisiting and adjustment is in order.
Do you have stats showing that people younger than 18 years old have more accidents than older people ? Because the fact that some young people exceed the speed limit doesnt show anything neither is excludes the fact that some older people too exceed the speed limit.
> In the United States, the fatal crash rate per mile driven for 16-19 year-olds is nearly 3 times the rate for drivers ages 20 and over. Risk is highest at ages 16-17.
Personally I hope they get banned, because I am pretty tired of being passed on my morning commute by often multiple (EP)A-traktors going 100km/h on a 70 km/h road, driven by someone without a driver's licence.
That is the reality. Not the romaticism in the article.