Peer Pressure

There was a tragic accident in Stratford Upon Avon at the weekend in which two young lads were killed in a collision with a Sight Seeing bus.
As they came from our town a lot of the local kids knew them well because they were well liked and popular so, being a small town, it stands to reason that quite a few of my pupils were friends with them.
I gave a lesson to a lad today that had previously been a passenger in a crash where the driver had been driving recklessly and so had come to lessons with a lot of fears.  We have worked hard addressing those fears and he came to realise that it was not other drivers he was scared of but his own lack of skills.  He has made excellent progress mainly through his acceptance of my probing questiuons as we try to analyse his feelings towards his driving and the driving of others. Consequently he is ready to take his test but, more importantly, he is ready to be a safe responsible driver out there on his own and will not be at the mercy of the peer pressure around him.
Unfortunately one of those killed, the passenger, was a good friend of his.
His lesson today began with him being visibly shaken and extremely tense hence a slightly rough drive, but he settled down to have a really good lesson.
It just struck me how lucky I am not to be a young man today in the 17-24 age bracket.  A lot of their friends drive and have cars and the emphasis seems to be on bravado and showing off your speed skills. 
These are new drivers who don't have embedded skills and are not equipped to handle those situations when things go wrong and this is one of the reasons why the accident rate is so high in this demographic.
I feel real sympathy for those sensible lads, and there are a good number of them out there, who feel goaded into behaving in a way in which they are not comfortable.
But I feel real admiration for those young men who fight the pressure and remain safe drivers who put neither themselves nor others at risk.
That takes real courage.