I mentioned this a few months ago. Reading between the lines, Mike Penning’s daughter must think it’s a good idea, otherwise it’s unlikely that something driving instructors have been suggesting for years would ever have come to fruition.
From sometime in 2012, learners will be allowed on motorways with a qualified instructor (not with mum or dad, or chav mates).
Of course, it was unlikely this change was ever going to get a clear ride into being. And who better than those guardians of safe motorway driving – lorry drivers – to start throwing up objections, via the Road Haulage Association (RHA).
Yes, the very people who contribute significantly to make motorways a whole lot less safe than they could be is now shooting its collective mouth off and saying that no one should be allowed on them until after they’ve passed their tests. Some of the RHA’s membership even thinks that people shouldn’t be allowed on even then – not until they have “more experience”.
It would simply have to be someone with the intelligence of a lorry driver to come up with that logic – to stay off motorways until you have more experience… of not being on them.
When you think that it’s taken around 80 years to seriously discuss the issue, it’s hardly likely that suddenly anyone is going to listen to a bunch of tailgaters raising objections.
Maybe we should start our own organisation against tailgating, and call for the banning of all HGVs from motorways until they learn how to leave a big enough gap so as not to create carnage if anything goes wrong? Or maybe that they have to have anti-tailgating technology fitted? Or that the maximum speed limit for HGVs on the road should be enforced, making tampering with the limiting fuse an offence punishable by prison for both the driver and his employer? Oh, and no sandwich toasters or kettles allowed in the cab while the vehicle is moving?
The only benefit to keeping learners off the motorways is that they wouldn’t be exposed to that kind of crap in the first place.
There’s another report – a better one, I have to say – here in the News & Star. It looks like the change will happen sometime during the summer. Of course, the last people Penning is likely to keep informed of developments and timelines is driving instructors, because I haven’t seen anything except what’s been in the press.