It’s pretty much a given that you’ll see at least one underage driver – probably on a motorcycle – whenever you hit the road in Jakarta. Despite its obvious danger and illegality, according to the latest data from the Jakarta Metro Police, underage driving seems to be a huge problem that is not going away anytime soon. In fact, it’s getting bigger.
The capital’s police recorded 290 accidents involving underage drivers in Jakarta during 2015, which sadly represents a 14% increase from 2014.
Of those 290 underage drivers, 12 died and 96 received serious injuries, while 107 received light injuries.“The figures are too high. They (the underage drivers) still don’t have the competence to drive,” said Adjunct Grand Commissioner Budiyanto, head of the Law Enforcement Sub-unit of Jakarta’s Traffic Police, as quoted by Warta Kota today.
By comparison, there were 183 accidents involving underage drivers in 2014, 16 of whom died, 56 seriously injured, and 72 lightly injured.
Budiyanto added that some parents still tend to be permissive in allowing their children to take their vehicles out on their own.
While it’s true that some of the blame should be attributed to overly lenient parents (and the children too), the authorities obviously need to do much more to actively eradicate underage drivers. Too often we’ve seen traffic police officers not even attempting to stop blatantly underage drivers, unless they are conducting one of their highly publicized but intermittent traffic discipline operation.
