Another hot story is the one about raising the age at which people can take their tests to 18. As I mentioned in this article, there are plans to introduce a graded licence system and to introduce various restrictions on new drivers. So it is a little surprising to hear what the AA president, Edmund King, has to say after casting doubt on the plan:
What we’d like to see is to teach people to drive more carefully before they pass their test.
I think Mr King is about as far above the actual process of teaching “people to drive” as it’s possible to get. In other words, totally out of touch with reality. No one down at the sharp end with an ounce of intelligence would believe it were that simple. It’s wishy-washy nonsense.
The fact – and it IS a fact, Mr King – is that new drivers have already been taught how to drive properly. They’ve already been taught how to drive carefully. The fact that they do not is down to their experience, maturity, and upbringing. It is impossible to reconcile the first two without the passage of time. Experience takes time to develop, as does maturity.
The most mature 17-year old in the world could still be involved in an accident because of inexperience. And the most experienced 17-year old (if such existed) could still have an accident as a result of immaturity. It is a basic Law of Nature. It has held true since the first written records of human history, and it has persisted until the present.
And still you get people who think that a few namby-pamby words can make it all all right.
New drivers need to be kept out of certain high-risk situations until they have developed experience and maturity. It’s not as if these new proposals want to wrap them in cotton wool or anything – the aim is just to keep cars full of immature prats off the roads, especially at night, in the face of overwhelming evidence to support it.