Maybe not. But if 17-23 yr olds are responsible for around 50% of road deaths they need to do something. You can go pretty quick in a 4 cylinder n/a car, my shitty old magna did 180. But the thing is, it was not designed to do those speeds safely and was scary as shit at that speed. I never took it over 130 after that. Now you stick a young kid in an Excel he may choose to try and go as fast as it will go, but he will learn pretty quickly it's no fun driving something like that fast. However you give him a nice turboed car or a V8 that hums along nice and 'safely' at 190 then he will more tempted. Obviously these laws penalise safe and responsible P-platers, but I can't see a way they can separate good from bad P-Platers. Perhaps increasing the amounts of points a P-Plater gets when speeding. You do 20 over you get 8 points. Its pretty hard to do 20 over accidently. Tough I know, but that would be a system that would reward safe drivers, or rather punish irresponsible ones. A lot of people have mentioned additional training, which is great, but it really doesn't stop things like young kids dragging. They know it's wrong, they've been told in their additional road safety course "don't speed" or "speed kills" but they still do it because they're 17 and have a nice powerful car. They won't want to drag in their Mums pink Excel.