THE car slammed into the power pole with such force that the vehicle was torn in two, killing the novice driver and his fiancee just days before Christmas and a month before they planned to marry.

The driver appeared to have lost control after his car clipped another vehicle at high speed in Sydney, Australia's biggest city.

Instead of celebrating the holiday period, the families of the 21-year-old driver and his 20-year-old fiancee spent Christmas Eve this year burying the couple.

The story is among hundreds telling of lives lost due to an inexperienced driver at the wheel. Australia is part of an international trend as many countries struggle to combat death tolls linked to young drivers.

"Every life saved is something to be treasured, something we aim for, something to be struggled for," Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson told a national summit convened in Canberra last month in a bid to improve training for young drivers.

Last year, 17-25 year olds accounted for 25 per cent of the 1,621 deaths on Australian roads. In the United States, nearly 9,000 people were killed in car crashes involving young drivers, with almost half those victims sitting behind the wheel.

For the European Union and Australia, government figures show Australia has the sixth worst death toll for young drivers with 18.5 fatalities for every 100,000 people aged between 18 and 24.

France has the worst rate of 30.6 deaths, followed by Austria, Germany, Spain and Italy.

Britain, where drivers can get their licence at the age of 17, comes in at number 11 with 14.3 deaths.

Many countries agree that the best way to tackle the problem among young drivers is to improve education, but many are also considering imposing restrictions on the types of cars that can be driven and the number of passengers.

Night curfew

In the US, the figures are just as alarming.

Veronica Betancourt's younger sister Alicia, 16, was killed in a crash outside Washington in suburban Maryland in September when she was a passenger in a friend's car.

Betancourt said laws for young drivers, who can obtain their licences between the ages of 16 and 18 depending on US state laws, must be tightened and teenagers should be required to take all the time they need to practise.

She warned that most teenagers don't think they can die just going out with friends.

"It happened to my sister and it can happen to anyone," Betancourt told reporters in Washington, where 17 teenagers have been killed in car accidents since September.

A recent spate of deaths involving young drivers in Australia and the US has prompted road safety advocates to push for a night-time curfew for novice drivers. Most US states already have some sort of night-time ban on young drivers.

"There is now good evidence that such restrictions reduce fatality rates," Rebecca Ivers, a senior research fellow who works in injury prevention and trauma care at Sydney University, wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.

"Evaluations of night driving restrictions have demonstrated reductions in night-time crashes of between 10 per cent and nearly 30 per cent," she said.

She said several studies had also found the risk of young drivers crashing increased with more than one passenger.

Australian states have been reluctant to introduce a curfew because of the effect it would have on the social and work lives of young drivers.

'Safe' speeding

Laws also vary from state to state in Australia, where drivers are able to get a learner's permit - allowing them to drive with a fully licensed driver - at 16, a probationary licence at 17 or 18 and a full licence between 18 and 21.

At this month's young driver forum in Canberra, national and state governments agreed to trial a special driver training course for teenagers after they get their probationary licence, with the aim of implementing a national education scheme by 2007.

The trial of 14,000 probationary licence holders, or "P-platers", is expected to involve a mix of on-road driving activities with emphasis on speed, safe distances from other vehicles, safe gaps when turning or changing lanes and detecting and responding to hazards.

"This has the potential to save the lives of hundreds of our young people - young people who will have the chance to achieve everything life has to offer, rather than being the subject of a few horrendous images on the nightly news," Anderson said.

Joshua Dixon of Canberra, Australia's capital, was 20 when he nearly died after his car hit a gutter and flipped several times. He supports government efforts to improve the education of young drivers.

"I've been told I was going about 75 kilometres per hour (45 mph) - only 15 kph over the limit. A safe limit to speed or so I thought. Police had to use the jaws of life to cut me free from the car," Dixon, 22, told the young drivers' forum in Canberra.

Doctors had to remove part of Dixon's skull so they could cut two blood clots from his brain, his right forearm was shattered and the promising young footballer was in and out of a coma for more than two weeks.

"I was told I could never play sport again - it was like a bomb hit me," Dixon said. "If I was 'safe' speeding and all this happened to me, imagine what it could be like for you."

(Agencies via Xinhua)