Off Camber - James Tate - Sport Compact Car Magazine

I can still remember thinking at 16 that young drivers were unfairly discriminated against. Police kept a special eye out for us, I thought, and insurance companies were out to ream us for every crumpled-up dollar in our pockets. I drove around shot through with fear of a random police stop. I was outraged by the exorbitant insurance rates we were made to pay for our age. Extortion! I thought, sure maybe we drive faster than 'old people', but our reflexes must be twice as quick, even on a bad day...

Looking at it with a (slightly) more mature perspective, though, I realize it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why the younger demographic is targeted by both police and insurers. Despite notions inside the heads of cocky teenagers worldwide, it turns out the best kind of driver isn't a newly licensed one.

Young drivers crash more. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports that: "The crash rate per mile driven for 16- to 19-year-olds is four times the risk for drivers 20 and older. Risk is highest at age 16. The crash rate per mile driven is nearly twice as high for 16-year-olds as it is for 18- to 19-year-olds." Insurance companies aren't pulling these rates out of thin air just to gouge teenage drivers. Whether or not you personally are a crashing young whippersnapper, you're going to pay higher rates at that age. Because there's a bigger chance that you'll eventually screw it all up and smash into the scenery at high velocity. I'm unsurprised to find that in my teenage years I crashed four times as much as in the rest of my life altogether.

And police harassment?

Unfortunately, it does happen, and I can't make excuses for it. But come on. These guys are just playing the numbers. The chances that you have a non-functioning part of some sort in your old modified car are simply greater. And when it's three o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday and you're bouncing around in your slammed and booming rice rocket, 'sitting duck' doesn't begin to describe your situation.

And besides, most of the time you're being stopped because you're doing something ill coilovers down to ground level and rip the catalytic converter out. Damn The Man. But as I get older I realize the price of the tickets and the hassle of constant harassment just aren't worth it-even if there isn't anything wrong with what I'm doing.

What if you're unwilling to be a sissy like me and submit to the oppression of The Man? Well, if the performance parts are staying on, come hell or high water, make sure you're implementing...