No one could listen to bereaved mum Crystal Owen speak so compellingly about why newly qualified drivers must build up experience before giving lifts to their friends without feeling stricken for her.

Crystal’s 17-year-old son Harvey drowned in a car with three friends on a camping trip when his friend approached a bend in an unfamiliar rural road.

Four excited friends off for an adventure in Snowdonia driven by one who had passed his driving test six months earlier.

“My son was able to get in the back of a car driven by a young, inexperienced driver and be driven on an unfamiliar rural road without my knowledge,” she said.

If any good can come out of losing her precious son, it would be to save other young people who die because of inexperience.

A police forensic collision investigator’s evidence was that there had been an “understeer” of the car as it navigated a bend on a 60mph road. He calculated its maximum theoretical speed as 38mph. Nothing reckless. Simply inexperience.

All four sixth formers died shortly after the car left the road into water. A tragic waste of life and promise. Families bereft. And it only takes a second.

Anyone who has battled with their own teenagers about trips in their friends’ cars as soon as they have ripped up their L plates, or turned themselves inside out with anxiety when they are later home than they said will shudder at just how easy tragedies like this can happen.

I remember that sick feeling when my younger son told me he had clambered out of a schoolfriend’s car when it ended up in a ditch on an icy road. There by the grace and all that.

But then the drivers among us know that excitement at being newly independent drives desperate to take our friends in our cars.

But looking back, we know that good driving comes with experience and learning to deal with the unexpected. A second’s distraction, mistake or lack of judgement can be catastrophic.

The coroner said she would write to the Department for Transport and the DVLA to raise concerns that deaths could continue to occur where “young, newly qualified drivers are permitted to carry passengers”.

Crystal Owen says her son had been “let down by an outdated driving licence system” and is campaigning for graduated driving licences for young new drivers.

The AA is also calling for new drivers under 21 to be banned from carrying passengers of a similar age  and have a “G” graduated driver plate, proven in other countries to significantly reduce road deaths and serious injuries.  It estimates introduction of graduated driving licences would save at least 58 lives and prevent 934 people being seriously injured in road crashes each year.

Previous governments have suggested banning them from driving at night or using a six-points-in-two-years-and-you’re-out graduate driving licence scheme.

It’s not young people bashing to single out new drivers.

Complacent experienced drivers get into bad habits and are also dangerous.

But it feels like common sense that young new drivers need practice when they are in sole charge of a lethal weapon at a time when the roads are busier than they have ever been.

And, while they are at it, if inexperience behind the wheel needs regulating, so does slower reaction that inevitable comes with age.

No one wants to deprive the elderly of their independence, but they must be capable to be safe, and the only way is regular testing.

But it feels so unfair when there are such idiots in the wide age span in between getting away with the most outrageous behaviour on the road, speeding, recklessly overtaking and tailgating.

We have some power in our hands to report drivers who endanger others. If they keep getting away with it, they’ll keep doing it.

We all have the right to feel safe

We’re back to GMT – also known as those dark months when women and girls are forced to stay indoors after dark.

While men enjoy evening runs and walks armed just with a head or body light, women are subject to a curfew until spring, fearful of what might happen if they venture out to exercise after dark.

No wonder so many of us who enjoy exercising outside and work full time have been glum and irritable this week. It feels too remote and perilous to do what we have enjoyed through the summer, especially in rural areas.

We feel exposed, vulnerable and very angry.

This week, a survey of 2,002 women commissioned by This Girl Can - a campaign developed by Sport England to promote sport among women - found that 72 per cent of the respondents changed their outdoor exercise routines after the clocks go back.

We self-censor out of fear because violence against women and girls is an epidemic.

We read about attacks all the time. If we went out just like any man does running or walking after dark and were attacked, people would question why we put ourselves at risk, rather than the bigger question about the attacker.

It is outrageous and unjust. Everyone has the right to feel safe on the streets and lanes, and to exercise in our communities when we please.