I imagine you believe that an 18 yr. old driver should handle every road emergency with perfect precision and discipline. Give me a break.
I believe it's their legal responsibility to be able to slow down or stop to avoid obstacles on the road.
I'm not suggestion that they needed to have perfect precision.
I'm suggesting that they should to be able to meet the minimum requirements under the laws under which we all drive.
However, if they failed to meet those minimum requirements, which we all do from time to time, that they should at least been able to slow down enough to make this a minor accident with minor damage and maintain reasonable control of their vehicle.
I'm not pulling these concepts out of nowhere. These are the traffic laws we all supposed to abide by.
If we fail to abide by them, we bear some responsibility in the results.