Adedokun Waliyu 
Are we ready for a new acronym to enter the vernacular? South Australia is; it just introduced new restrictions for drivers, effective December 1, 2024, for those who drive UHPVs — Ultra High-Powered Vehicles.
Many of the world’s road-safety laws continue to leave vulnerable road users and other drivers at risk, but this Aussie state is the first to require licence designations for those who drive supercars on ordinary roads: cars like the Lamborghini Huracan, a driver of which struck and killed a 15-year-old in 2019 when he lost control of his car and plowed into the front of the restaurant the victim and her friend were walking by.
“An ultra high-powered vehicle (UHPV) is defined by [South Australian] authorities as having a power-to-weight ratio of at least 276kW (370 hp) per tonne (1,000kg), with a gross vehicle mass of less than 4.5 tonnes — with around 200 models believed to fall into that category. Buses and motorcycles are exempt.”
It’s in response to what the Governor General says the tragedy highlighted, the “serious problems with our current laws where driving conduct causes death or serious harm…[t]hese problems included the lack of an offence that takes into account driving that does not meet the threshold of ‘dangerous’ driving, but warrants tougher penalties than those available at the lower level of offending.”
That particular Huracan driver pleaded guilty to ‘aggravated driving without due care’ over the crash, but in August was found not guilty of the more serious offence of ‘causing death by dangerous driving’. Witness reports say the Lamborghini had been side-by-side with another car for about five minutes before the crash. “I heard the Lamborghini rev really loud, and he lost control of the vehicle…he took off really fast and the car swung into the bushes…to the footpath,” the court heard. Another motorist heard tires screeching. The young teenagers were struck.
Come 2022, the driver’s seven-month sentence was dumped to just shy of five months, with 200 hours of community service and the suspension of their driver’s licence for a single year.
The victim’s family walked out on his apology, and you can hardly blame them. It’s also a wake-up call to the rest of the world that just because we have to share the road with people who can buy far more car than they can handle, they shouldn’t be allowed to kill us and walk away making a sad face.
At this time, the Australian government has also revamped definitions and punishments for drivers who kill, with the maximum for ‘driving without due care’ jumping from 12 months to seven years.
Owners of vehicles considered UHPVs would be required to take online training to receive what will be called a “U Class” licence. And, in what might be a first of its kind, hefty fines (up to $5,000) would kick in if “motorists…deliberately disable an ‘automated intervention system’ on a UHPV.” This means no more turning off the nanny systems would-be racers hate so much, such as automated emergency braking, electronic stability control, and traction control. If you can’t drift your supercar, why have one, right? It’s unclear how these charges might be pressed, though with our vehicles’ telematics recording every burp and fart, I’m sure it’s highly doable.
Because Driving.ca’s Matthew Guy is better at math, he offered up a peek at the sorts of vehicles that would fall under the new Australian licencing revamp. To earn the nod, they have to sport 168 hp per 1,000 pounds. Along with the aforementioned Lamborghini (213.8), look for the Chevy Corvette Z06 (195.1), the Dodge Challenger Demon 170 (239.5), the Ferrari 296 GTB (221.4) the new Lucid Air Sapphire (226.4), and the Tesla Model S Plaid (214.2).
Guy points out that the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N (136.4) is nudging close to that cutoff point. The Dodge Challenger Hellcat lands just under the wire at 162.4, pushing the question of whether a law like this would make manufacturers reconsider some of that horsepower as buyers hunt to evade the new legislation. Guy further ponders how homebrewed hotrods will fall into this equation.
We need an overhaul of our licencing system for one simple reason: physics. Canadians keep buying goonishly large pickups, SUVs, and vehicles with entirely too much horsepower — all of which compete with hatchbacks and e-bikes for space on our roads. Likewise, the sheer weights of EVs in that rapidly growing sector are screaming for more attention to be paid to the cost when those vehicles meet their lighter brethren — and those folks simply walking on the sidewalk.
We’ve made drivers of transport trucks qualify for more intensive licence designations forever, though watching the way many of those are now piloted on our highways indicates that once noble profession has itself fallen to shards. Even a G licence, the lowest on the pole, still requires almost nothing to attain in Ontario, the COVID-backlog dumbing-down of its test requirements remaining in place. We don’t train drivers, we don’t test them, and we don’t hold them accountable.
It’s a frequent refrain that we don’t need more laws, we just need to implement the ones we already have. The trouble with that approach is the vehicles they were intended to govern have changed so drastically.
It’s fun to point and laugh at Highway Traffic Act laws first instituted when horsepower meant actual horses, but the power and weight of common vehicles on our roads today demands an overhaul of how those driving them are trained, policed, and held accountable.
Sommerfeld has been polishing her skills as an advocate for over 16 years, helping decipher a complicated industry for consumers who just need good information. A two-time AJAC Journalist of the Year, ask her anything – except to do a car review.
After beginning her career in writing with The Motherlode column in the Hamilton Spectator in 2003, Lorraine added automotive journalism to her file in 2005. After stints with The Toronto Star and The Globe & Mail, she has been with Driving.ca since 2014. She began hosting The Driving Podcast in 2021, and helmed The Lemon Aid Car Show for seven years. She has been a member of AJAC since 2013.
After years of partaking in adventures like driving Smart cars in the Yukon winter, competing in the Gazelle Rally in Morocco, off-roading in Argentina, RVing around much of Canada, hypermiling across Canada and chasing down Route 66 (twice), Lorraine now writes as a consumer advocate.
She is a prominent voice on radio stations across the country, and her debut novel, A Face in the Window, was released in July 2023.
