So I got round to watching the second
series of Barely Legal Drivers, which, for those of you who don’t know is BBC 3 show, following 12 (2 per episode)
newly qualified or out-of-practice young drivers. It follows the formula of
such shows as Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents, in that the participants are
told they are being filmed for some other show, while the cameras are there
mainly to allow their parents access to parts of their childrens’ lives that they
would not ordinarily see. To add to that, they also bring in former traffic
copper Judith and (for this second series) a top driving instructor, to make
the actual assessment of the participants’ driving skills.
On the surface this would appear to be a
show about entertaining people with the wacky antics of young drivers and
focussing on the typical British family and how the idea of how the
parent/child relationship shifts once a child has access to something as
important as a car.
However something far more sinister
actually lies beneath the surface of this programme. It is propagated on the
same notion as that of Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents. The notion that it is
perfectly acceptable for parents to lie to and spy on their children.
Now you could say that the whole issue of
national broadcast date being set for a programme no matter what the
participants think it is means they’re asking for this information to be made
public. But that would miss the point I’m trying to make.
Consider how disrespectful it is to their
children to lie to them about what’s going on, spy on them and then bring in a
couple of external examiners to tut at them. This is linked to an overriding
attitude that permeates the older generation in the UK.
It used to be that young people could be
framed as disrespectful and unappreciative (“I didn’t fight a war, so you could
speak to me like that”). However the generation that relied on that viewpoint
has all but died off and been replaced by a generation that literally didn’t fight
a war. This generation can’t legitimately frame their youngers as disrespectful
so instead settles for going with dangerous.
Case in point, programmes like Barely
Legal Drivers completely ignore older drivers who are awful behind the wheel,
and are only interested in waggling a finger to young drivers and saying that
their very act of getting behind the wheel of the car is a horribly dangerous
thing that we should all be afraid of.
For example, one of this years’
participants was denied a car, given his propensity for driving at between 75
and 78 miles per hour on the motorway. Kids and adults alike, I’m going to tell
you a secret; EVERYONE drives at 80MPH on the motorway. Unless they’re really
bored the Police won’t even stop you for driving at 80 (usually because that’s
how fast they’re going themselves). This was even pretty much said in the
episode itself, with participants father pointing out that he usually drives
about 80 on the motorway, only to be slapped back by his wife, who pointed out
that their son was too young to be driving at that speed. Of course she was fine with her
husband driving at that speed. Judith even dolled out some advanced driving
lessons for this based on his being 8 miles over the speed limit. A speed
limit that no one Judith’s age (or any age for that matter) respects.
The hypocrisy of this act is at it’s most
evident in the next episode when Judith chastises another young driver for
hogging the middle lane of the motorway and holding other cars up, by getting
there and only driving at 70MPH. Well that’s all very well Judith, but in order
to not be holding up the cars behind her up she’d have to be driving faster
than 70MPH, which according to you is guaranteed to kill everyone using the
motorway at the time. Incidentally I wonder whether the BBC will be offering
advanced driving courses to everyone it recorded using the motorway on the
occasion of my first example. While they only had a creepy telemetry box in the
participant’s car, the fact that he didn’t collide with any of the cars in
front of him suggests they were travelling at the same speed as him.
If these lessons really are being given
out in the spirit of safety on the UK roads, then I’d say the BBC has an obligation
ensure every single driver in their programme that’s been recorded doing something
wrong should be educated about their mistakes.
Oh and to close out this point, if he was
speeding so much, how did the camera car following him keep up? I mean it’s not
like the camera car was speeding too? That would mean there were actually three
different types of hypocrisy at work here.
So what’s really going on with Barely
Legal Drivers? Am I just reading too much in to what the show’s agenda is?
Or is this a show (like Sun, Sex and
Suspicious Parents) that’s designed to promote and dislike and distrust of the
young?
