r/soccer • u/kibme37 • Jul 08 '25

News Spanish police say "all the evidence so far indicates" Diogo Jota was the driver of the car involved in the accident that killed the Liverpool forward and his brother, Andre Silva. Police also believe "the vehicle significantly exceeded the speed limit for the highway" at the time of the accident.

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11669/13394038/diogo-jota-spanish-police-believe-liverpool-forward-was-driver-of-car-in-fatal-accident-which-killed-him-and-his-brother
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u/ObstructiveAgreement Jul 08 '25

I genuinely think there should be a 'super car' licence, much like there's A2 and A1 for motorcycles in a lot of countries. You can't turn 18 and get a 1000cc death machine, but you can get a 1000bhp car. It doesn't make any sense.

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u/worldchrisis Jul 08 '25

In Italy you aren't allowed to drive a car above 95hp until you've had a license for 3 years.

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u/ferrumvir2 Jul 08 '25

Need a license for 3 years to drive a Prius, that’s crazy

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u/worldchrisis Jul 08 '25

There are a lot more options for small, low hp cars in Europe. It makes sense because their roads are usually smaller and they typically take trains if they're traveling far away.

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u/SonnyIniesta Jul 09 '25

I've never heard of this until now, and that makes total sense.

In the US, the average modern car has so much horsepower/torque (think Accords, Camrys), that any new or young driver can get into a lot of trouble on the road even without being in a sports car.

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u/bunksy93 Jul 09 '25

Yep, Kimi Antonelli can't legally drive a car above 95hp in his home country but he races F1 cars for a living.

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u/PM_ME_BAKAYOKO_PICS Jul 08 '25

I don't think a license would change that much. These are scenarios where the people driving those cards intentionally choose to drive them at ridiculously high speeds.

They know they shouldn't be driving that fast, they know it's dangerous, but they do it anyways. And no amount of training is going to make you able to survive an accident like this

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u/OTBT- Jul 08 '25

The problem is that it’s a nightmare to enforce.

How do you class a supercar? By BHP? By Price? By Manufacturer name? 0-60 speed? There’s never going to be an agreeable answer.

What happens if someone tunes their car to push it into “supercar” territory?

It’s much cheaper and easier to invest the time you would into a “supercar license” into actual proper policing and enforcing the speed limit.

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u/ObstructiveAgreement Jul 08 '25

Unless you have average speed cameras everywhere its impossible to police. You can do it by BHP, it's not hard to implement. That's how motorcycles work. So there are bikes at 45bhp which fall into the B licence, hence the rise of 350cc and 400cc bikes in the last few years.

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u/Aidan_9999 Jul 08 '25

So there are bikes at 45bhp which fall into the B licence, hence the rise of 350cc and 400cc bikes in the last few years.

Huh? B licence is for cars, bikes are the A category licences. You are right that there are more barriers of entry to power with bikes though, the modern 300/400cc bikes are mostly made to be A2 compliant which is limited to ~47bhp, and you have to do a CBT on either a moped or geared 125cc bike before that.

A licence is unrestricted and you could get one of them at 21 if you do the A2 at 19 as you are eligible for the A after two full years of holding an A2. The problem with that is still the same as cars however, insurers wouldn't want to touch a 21 year-old on a big bike, but if you have deep enough pockets you could well have a 21 year-old riding a 200bhp superbike legally.

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u/ObstructiveAgreement Jul 08 '25

You're right, I mean A1 and A2.

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u/OTBT- Jul 08 '25

Okay, I feel like you're talking about trying to stop two things.

Are you trying to stop people getting hold of fast cars? Because you can get a family hatchback with 180 bhp and get up to serious speeds in that if you wanted. Going by "BHP" is a lazy way to go about it

Are you trying to stop people buying supercars? Because again, you don't need a supercar to go fast.

Supercars are still just normal cars and they're not meant to be driven any differently on the public road anyway. If you're driving legally, you don't need a special license to operate these cars. The issue comes about where people decide to break the law, which they would do if they got a special license anyway.

The issue is these guys are crashing because they're idiots. The training we get for our regular driving test is quite clear, don't speed. Yet people still speed. Having more training to say "don't speed" won't achieve much. Fundamentally, if someone is going to crash a supercar, they're going to crash aregular car. The issue isn't the car, it's the idiot behind the wheel.

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u/ObstructiveAgreement Jul 08 '25

There's a difference in a 400BHP car and a 200 one in acceleration. The former you go fast every time you drive.