Sure, there were safety reasons for those laws to be brought into action, but were the affects this would have on rural and regional drivers really taken into consideration?

If you are under the age of 25 and have your P-plates it is illegal to drive between the hours of 11pm and 5am with more than one passenger under the age of 21.

The penalty is three demerit points and a fine.

This is making it extremely difficult for teenagers to get home safely after events, and is also very inconvenient for young workers.

Not only do these laws make it much harder for teens to legally commute at night, but I believe it is also going to lead to risky and dangerous behaviour and laws being broken.

Rural areas will be particularly prone to this rule breaking as there are very few alternate forms of public transport, getting home would often be a safer option than staying out, and a car load of kids doing a last minute Cinderella dash to get home in time would not be uncommon.

L-platers are now required to clock up 120 hours of driving, with a full license holder, 20 of these hours at night.

This presents another issue - as fuel prices rise, the extra hours in a vehicle are extremely costly, not to mention time consuming.

When averaged out over a year, this equates to 2.3 hours on the road a week!

At today's fuel price it is was estimated at around $1900 of fuel to drive those 120 hours for an L-plater.

People in country areas are already socially isolated by distance and lack of public transport, so surely some reduction could be made to the L-plate hours and concession to the passenger law for P-platers in rural locations.