Category - World

I saw this a few days ago. It tells how driving lessons are being given to young people between 15 and 19 years old in Wokingham.

I’ve written before about how lessons have been given to those as young as 11, and that that particular course was being championed by self-declared motoring guru (and former Top Gear presenter), Quentin Willson. I said then that I believe children should be kept away from cars – which are for adults – but taught road safety through cycling proficiency and things like The Green Cross Code, etc.

The reason I believe that is because this current fad is simply designed to pander to the wants of people who would otherwise break the law. The best it can achieve is to make sure they break the law slightly more safely than they would have done otherwise. More realistically, though, it is simply a unique selling point (USP) dreamed up by a handful of driving instructors, and as such I can’t fault it.

This latest example is probably just a case of jumping on the bandwagon, and I doubt that it would have happened if the other lot hadn’t done it first. Again, from the perspective of making money for driving instructors, the idea cannot be faulted.

But I will say again that cars are for adults, not children. And children shouldn’t be encouraged like this when the situation with them driving illegally is already bad enough. There’s no evidence that starting them early makes them safer drivers in later life – that’s just wishful thinking. Far too many other factors govern their behaviour, and I fear that this pandering to them is simply another factor likely to worsen their behaviour rather than improve it.

Parents (many of whom are driving instructors) should concentrate on saying “NO” to their offspring a little more instead of trying to turn them into mini-adults way before their DNA has triggered enough of the right hormones for them to pull it off.

Wokingham is at least only dealing with teenagers, but 15 is still too young for someone to be tempted with something that will become a symbol of their embryonic manhood once they turn 17.

And then a story like this one comes through just to prove my point.

An ATV is an All Terrain Vehicle (I guess we’d call them quad bikes over here). Well, in Canada a paediatric group is saying that children should be banned from driving them because…

…children under the age of 16 lack the knowledge, physical size, strength, and cognitive and motor skills to operate the machines safely…

…The highest risk of injury is really between sort of [ages] 10 to 25…

Physical size and strength are obviously more relevant to ATVs. But cognitive and motor skills are definitely not. And that’s one of the major reasons young drivers have accidents after they pass their driving tests.

It translates to: they’re not as good as they think they are – even up to age 25.

These misguided adults offering kiddie-lessons can’t see what they’re really doing – they’re trying to convince children that they ARE that good, when the laws of nature guarantee that they aren’t.

I’ll say again that it’s why children should be kept away from motor vehicles, and not encouraged to play with them and made to think they’re all grown up before their time.

This story in a Finnish news journal caught my eye – initially because the translated title is ambiguous, saying “Anyone can teach driving a car”.

In fact, the story gets more interesting when you realise that at the moment, driving schools and family members are the only ones who can teach people to drive in Finland. Parents are not even allowed to teach their own kids if they’re not living at the same address.

However, from January next year this is going to change. In theory, anyone will be allowed to teach learners to drive – but police will decide who to award teaching permits to.

The change is actually a common sense one. The family restriction must be hellishly difficult for people in many cases, and it doesn’t really alter the quality of instruction the learner receives. The supervising driver – the Finnish source calls them “instructors”, which is another translation ambiguity – must have held a licence for 3 years, use a training vehicle with secondary brakes fitted, and have passed a special test. The permit granted will last for 9 months (which it does at present).

Even this is far more stringent than what we have in the UK.

The Finnish system will also require that every learner take special training with a proper driving school. The article also implies that more hours will be required, but it doesn’t go into any detail.

What a shame UK politician haven’t got the balls to introduce something even close to this.

This story says that changes are proposed to the Australian driving test. A couple of comments in the story caught my eye.

It proposes fewer chances for error, and recommends focus on manoeuvres such as right-hand turns and merging, which carry a much higher crash risk than things like reverse parks.

Why do people always seem to think that only things likely to directly involve accidents should be tested? Being able to carry out basic exercises and routines is a way of testing car control and manoeuvring skills – both of which are building blocks for driving safely.

Personally, I think the only people who have it in for reverse parking are those who find it difficult themselves. And advocating dropping it is their insidious way of trying to dumb down the test (that applies whatever country we’re talking about).

Under the changes, drivers are permitted to exceed the speed limit by up to 4km/h on three occasions before being automatically failed.

Mr Emerson said he would seek public feedback on the review, which represented the first significant overhaul of the driving test in 14 years.

What precisely do they think “the public” will say? This is a “public” that wants to go faster, and which can’t reverse park properly in the first place! In any case, if an idea is that good it doesn’t need “the public” to agree to it. After all, they wouldn’t consult the public about cutting speed limits, so why consult them about effectively increasing the limit – unless they already have doubts about it?

Ask the “man in the street” over here, and you’d immediately be talking to “the best driver in the world” (in his own opinion). He’d have all kinds of suggestions for “improving” the test, most of which would be utter rubbish if heard by anyone who knew what they were talking about. However, ministers and the media would take them seriously – and in our most notable case, if the “man in the street” turned out to be the daughter of The Transport Minister, then many of the changes could be rushed through Parliament without any form of additional “consultation”.

He [Paul Turner] said although reverse parking did not carry a high crash risk it was still a “technical skill” that deserved a place in the driving test.

“We don’t believe it should be a matter of replacing things in the test,” Mr Turner said.

At least someone has a sensible outlook.

One final comment in the story. The article says:

Statistics released by Transport and Main Roads show pass rates for driving tests in Queensland averaged 64 per cent last year. The rate has remained virtually unchanged despite the introduction in 2007 of the 100-hour logbook system for learners.

How would the logbook system change pass rates? And especially so when you already have a very high figure of two-thirds passing!

What it would do is affect the number of people taking the test (if they actually used it), or perhaps the number having accidents in the first few years following their tests (if it worked as intended). The percentage of people taking tests may well have changed as a result, but why should it have anything but a minor impact on the already high actual pass rate? All people do, more or less, is turn up for test now with a bit of paper they didn’t have before – it’s getting the paper which is the new bit.

This is an interesting story in the Hindustan Times about lane discipline.

One of my biggest headaches as a driving instructor is that some pupils have real problems with lane discipline. Indeed, in the course of any normal day, my own observations confirm that a huge number of supposedly competent drivers have the same problems, too.

Only the other day I had a pupil fail her test for crossing into the path of another car on a roundabout (drifting into the right hand lane). It was on what is known as the Virgin Roundabout and it’s on several of the Colwick test routes. In the debrief the examiner told her that she’d done it both going out and coming back, and on the second occasion there was a car just behind her who had to brake. She only got three faults in total.

This particular pupil is from India, and she has a full licence from there. She has done a lot of driving in her home city.

Among her “habits” that I’d had to address – apart from a total lack of awareness of road markings in some situations – was the knee-jerk reaction to literally anything she could see moving as we approached minor roads or from the left on roundabouts. When I first started teaching her, she’d happily stop dead in the middle of a roundabout if she saw anyone approaching on her left. She’d do the same if anyone approached a give way line at the end of a minor road as she was passing it. We’d addressed this, but in times of stress she could easily revert without thinking. That’s the trouble with bad habits – they can come back.

I’ve got another pupil who holds a full Sri Lankan licence. He will slam on the brakes when we’re on any roundabout if he detects an approaching vehicle on any entry road. He has no concept of “staying in lane”. He’s an older guy, and breaking this habit is very slow going.

These two are not isolated cases. Over the years I have noticed that people who have experience driving in India – particularly in big cities – often exhibit the same weaknesses.

In talking with them (and having driven in Pakistan myself) it is understandable why they have trouble. In many countries it is a free-for-all, where giving way anywhere simply doesn’t exist as a rule of the road. Certainly when I was in Pakistan, people just piled into roundabouts, hands pumping their car horns, and meandered their way around all the other traffic to forge a path in the direction they wanted. Lanes simply did not exist in their minds on roundabouts. And it was similar at junctions – people were liable to just emerge, so everyone was always on their guard.

In a way it was quite elegant. There were no accidents – well, certainly not as many as you’d expect from such behaviour, though I’m sure that bumps and scrapes must have been quite common. But it explains why drivers from overseas react the way they do when they drive in the UK. They’re reacting to what could happen based on their experiences at home.

The story in the Hindustan Times implies that lane discipline was officially non-existent – and I mean that was the way you were supposed to drive – until the recent change in the Law. The article says that “lane-driving” has been introduced “on a trial basis”:

DSP (traffic) Vijay Kumar said, “Even a fortnight after the introduction of lane-driving on Jan Marg on a trial basis, motorists are not following the guidelines. The concept can never be a success till motorists support the police endeavour and follow rules diligently.”

Lane-driving basically requires earmarking a given road for different categories of traffic, including emergency and heavy vehicles, normal and slow-moving vehicles.

This further quote clearly suggests that the concept of using left and right hand lanes for turning left and right was not the usual method for drivers over there:

Vijay Kumar said, “When you reach 50 to 100 metres from an intersection or rotary, the central lane is to be used for going straight, and left and right lane for turning left and right, respectively. The driver can switch indicator for right and left movement and turn accordingly.”

India has various other modes of transport, such as rickshaws and animal-drawn carts, which are not often seen in the West, and much of this new lane emphasis is designed to make it safer for those road users.

Roundabouts and lane discipline can be a problem for any learner, of course.

What is meant by “lane discipline”?

It means choosing the correct lane at the appropriate time and – to a certain extent – staying in that lane.

If road markings or road signs indicate which lanes to use to head off in certain directions and you wait until the last moment to change, then you are guilty of poor lane discipline. If you straddle lanes or wander out of your own lane then you are also guilty. You could also be marked for poor planning, normal driving position, observation/safety (if you don’t realise you’re doing it), response to traffic signs/markings, and so on.