A friend of ours bought his daughter a used Boxster when she turned 16. But he took out the passenger seat, and put in a roll cage from a spec Boxster with a petty bar that ran through the passenger seat area. Then he took the radio out of the car and put in a plate to block the hole.

With no friends in the car, and no radio to distract her, she became an attentive driver.

That's the dumbest thing I've heard in a long time but to each their own.

A well used mini-van. No self respecting teen wants to be seen in one, so less inclined to seek attention.

It's great how people who will never be a certain age again love to come up with rules and laws to limit what people can do. Maybe if we stopped taking all responsibility away from young people, they would learn to be more responsible.

I didn't want my teen to have an easy way to transport a lot of friends.

I found a good compromise in a 2-door GTI, manual transmission. Very durable and reliable. No backup cam, no CarPlay, simple radio, it's a hassle for his buddies to climb in the backseat, so he typically is toting around just one friend, which the state of NJ says is the maximum for their first year driving.

He's proud of his driving abilities, he's the only kid in the suburban NYC high school to drive a stick, and I am happy to drive it when I'm headed into meetings in the city or on a snowy day.

Since we "share" teh car, he has been been paying 50% of the purchase price back to us as his share. After a year, when there are no bumps or bruises to the car, he'll get his money back for spending money at college. Especially since the car will be at home for the first 2 years of school based on requirements at Syracuse.

He was enrolled in a defensive driving class at Lime Rock even before he got his full license and it has helped him to be more aware as a driver.

All good stuff.

Most of these people are way past High School.
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Very sorry to hear this, let’s hope he will fully recover.

For a speedy recovery.

My prayers

Who said anything about taking responsibility away from young people? All that is being suggested here is not giving them too much temptation which they are generally ill-equipped to handle.

Every single human that lives to be an adult of 30 and older, remembers being 16 themselves and what they were like and what they did their parents did not know about.

My dad made me pay 100% of all the costs of my first car. He did give me an interest free loan, and I had 12 months to pay it off, so job was imperative. The only thing he paid for was the insurance. I paid fore every drop of gas, I did the maintenance, I paid for the tires, and every single expense.

It was a 1960 VW bug with over 100,000 miles on it that cost $600. $50 bucks a month for car payments was tough with just a part time job but I did it.

We have 4. Two wore out an old Toyota Corolla and the other two a Jetta tdi. The models were intentional. We threatened the mini van if they wrote off the cars, or were caught performing. I think any car is a lot of responsibility for a teen. Why tempt them. The 930 gives this old guy’s right foot a buzz. My wife’s Jetta less so.

My first car was an '86 Dodge 600 Turbo. It was slow. It didn't handle well. It met all of the requirements ya'll are putting forth. It still ended up parked on top of a fire hydrant while driving too fast. More power would have just meant that I'd have replaced the suspension from hopping the curb instead of the engine from the oil pan puncture. The replacement was a '71 Super Beetle. Even slower. I can't recall if the mountain I tossed it off ruined that one, or if the rust claimed it first. I totalled a car a year until my mid 20s, I think. It got to the point where I wasn't allowed to keep another car on my parent's land until I "emptied a parking spot first". The 323 I crashed into a gas station, the 3000GT whose engine I blew up in Denver, the 280Z I lit on fire... I churned through cars like crazy. When I got out of college and wanted something nice, that's when I stopped acting like a tool on the roads.

I'll tell ya right now, if you were to offer to pay half of a new Miata to my 16-year-old self, I'd be more careful with that car than I EVER was with anything else I'd driven. The guys I knew in school who had nice cars didn't do dumb things. Either they built those cars themselves with their folks in the years approaching their 16th birthday, or they spent 2-3 years saving up to buy it (generally with a matching parental contribution). They knew the value of their rides and how screwed they'd be trying to get a like replacement.

...Except for the off-roading crowd. They seemed to take great pleasure in banging the snot out of their vehicles. The worse it looked, the happier they were. 'Course, you're not street racing in an XJ on 35" tires with half a ton of metal replacing your front and rear bumpers. You're barely able to move when the light turns green.

The kids who were doing dumb things in their cars in high school were the kids who had middle-of-the-pack vehicles, typically Grandma's old sedan or the truck Dad drove until he got a new one. They didn't have to put any effort into acquiring the vehicle, and thus didn't respect it. I was one of these kids. If you wrecked it, eh, whatever. Take the insurance check and go get another one. Hell, car shopping is fun. If you're handed a turd and told to be thankful, well... It's gonna get treated like a turd.

My dad bought me a 59 Saab 93 2 stroke, suicide doors, 3 speed on the column with synchros gone in 2nd (had to double clutch), and a piece of 1/2" plywood for the drivers floor (rot at 250,000 miles in the NE US). Smart man my dad....

Something to be said about having survived our youth.
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There's a principle scientists use called "titration" which involves steadily increasing the concentration or dose up to the appropriate level. It applies in all walks of life. If a beginner at karate tries to break ten clay house tiles, they break their hands, which may never heal to work as intended again. However if they start with wood, and build up through more tiles, the bones in their hand harden to the point where they can break ten with no harm.

The same applies to youngsters handling risk. By slowly titrating up the risk to which you expose them, to match the level of responsibility they display, you can expose them to non fatal consequences, from which they get to stick around and learn from, rather than die or be crippled at the first error. It's much the same as not letting a baby on top of a wall, whereas an older kid having shown they can walk and balance, you titrate up their risk threshold to walk on the wall and jump down. Before you know it they can be mountaineering with responsibility for their own ropes.

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How’s he doing?

I was just happy to be able to drive my dad's 1981 Toyota Corolla DX with a 1.3L 4K engine from time to time, and the 1969 Beetle with a 1500cc engine. The rest of the time I took public transport.