How To Get Banned Before You Hit Puberty

We’ve all been there. You’re 12, you’re bunking off school, having a cheeky smoke behind the garages before turning a rusty hanger on that knackered Fiesta, breaking in and hotwiring it. 10 minutes later you’ve got three police-spec Vectras in your mirrors and you’ve just mown down that old lady's cat from across the street, right before smashing into the bus stop…Wait, we haven’t been there.

The closest our 12-year-old selves got to such mischief was a quick GTA session (I’m talking GTA 2 – remember that?)… But 2012’s 12 year olds are slightly more hands on when it comes to grand theft auto.

New figures from the government’s statistics elves show that since 2009, five 11-year-olds have been banned from driving, despite being too young to have even completed their cycling proficiency tests, let alone apply for their provisional driving licence. Another 41 12-year-olds, 164 13-year-olds, 578 14-year-olds, 1420 15-year-olds and 3125 16-year-olds have also been slapped with bans.

Three of the 11-year-old yoofs were even charged with 'aggravated taking of a vehicle,' which in English means nicking a car and driving dangerously, damaging property or injuring someone. Not cool. And one particularly hoon-happy 12-year-old even managed to score a lifetime driving ban this year after being convicted twice for stealing cars.

Weirdly though any bans for underage drivers apply from when they’re convicted, not when they hit 17. This means that a 14-year-old banned from driving for two years can still pick up their provisional licence on their 17th birthday.

Damn. If we’d known the law was so wimpy we might have 'borrowed' a few cars back when we were in year 10. But don’t get any ideas those of you who are just hitting teenagedom. Now team CT is on the roads, we don’t want any of you nicking or crashing into our precious metal. So go and do your maths homework instead.

While the underage hoons banged up by the fuzz might have been charged for trashing a £200 Nova into a lamppost, some kids are a bit luckier and find other ways to learn how to drive. Check out this little dude who must have the best dad in the world :

Or to impress all your five-year-old friends, why not try a bit of Mustang drifing. This fella’s already impressing the laydeez with his dorifto skills. Sweet:

But this guy has to be the luckiest 11-year-old with parents mad enough to chuck him the keys to their Audi R8 for muchos donut fun. Not that he looks too happy about it. In fact, he’s got the look of a kid who’s auditioning for the role of the most hard-done-by orphan in Oliver.

But since most of us don’t have parents with R8s, and even fewer have parents with R8s who are willing to chuck us the keys, we have to set our sights a bit lower and put up with driving dad’s ancient Mondeo around a deserted industrial estate at 5mph. Fun, eh?

So now it’s your turn to fess up and share your driving misdemeanors with us and tell us how you practiced driving...