With traditional methods of communicating with educational institutions not showing much results, police are looking at collaborating with parents.

In recent times, there has been a spate of accidents involving teenagers at the wheel. Investigation into many of these accidents has showed these teenagers to have either driven recklessly or have been unable to keep their head in a crisis. In many of these cases, the teenager at the wheel would have lost control of the vehicle. In some cases, daredevilry, which includes road racing, snuffs out young lives.

Given the seriousness of the issue, the transport department is going beyond the usual methods to curb the menace of rash driving by teenagers.

Among the usual methods, is sending a communication every year to schools asking them to dissuade children from riding bikes to schools. According to the police, this measure has not borne fruit and many youngsters continue to ride power bikes and cars.

Many Regional Transport Officials (RTO) and senior traffic police officers feel parents should be involved in efforts to curb rash driving by youngsters and strict action taken against owners of the vehicles if such incidents has to reduce.

While some RTO officials are planning to hold meeting with parents, teachers’ associations in schools to ensure that their children do not ride powerful bikes, some traffic officers are planning to send SMSes to parents, with the help of schools, to enlighten about the perils they are exposing their children to by gifting them such bikes.

According to Provision 1 in Section 4 of the Motor Vehicles Act, no one under the age of 18 years can drive a motor vehicle unless the engine capacity is not exceeding 50 cc and the driver is 16 years of age. “However, now there are not many bikes with engines as low-powered as 50cc or below. So, students use two-wheelers that have a higher engine capacity,” said a transport department official.

According to the Chennai traffic police, every day around 10,000 traffic violation cases are booked across the city.

“Out of this, nearly 3,000 are for rash driving. Most of them involve youngsters. We use speed guns to detect speeding vehicles and put up barricades to reduce speeding,” said a police officer.

They however feel parental control is critical to curbing this menace.

“Youngsters should not be gifted power bikes and cars before they are responsible enough to drive carefully. Most youngsters who have caused accidents have said they were not able to achieve control over the vehicle,” said a traffic police source.

Some mechanics say earlier many youngsters modified their bikes for power and performance. “But now the bike manufactures themselves provide extremely powerful two-wheelers,” said S. Gopinath, a mechanic from Mylapore.

The culture of modifying cars for power and performance is not big in Chennai, experts say. They however add that a few youngsters, in the age group of 15 to 25, approach those who can modify their cars for power.

“Many of the teenagers get carried away seeing Hollywood movies. They want their cars to look like those seen in the movies, but they don’t get powerful as there are not many experts who can do this,” said Karthikk Raj, CEO, Speed Freaks, a firm that offers automotive solutions for cars.

He said that accidents did not happen because of the machine but because of the person at the wheel. Driving discipline made a huge difference.

What the law says regarding driving age

1. According to a transport department official, those aged between 16 and 18 years who are applying for a license should have a 50 cc vehicle registered in their name. They cannot ride their parents' or relatives' vehicles.

2. For motorcycle without gears no exceeding 50 cc - completion of 16 years

3. For motocycle with gears and light motor vehicles - completion of 18 years

4. For transport vehicles - completion of 20 years

Dangerous stunts

Attempts at daredevilry and rash driving have been responsible for quite a few accidents in the past.