In “Merge, right?”
and “Honest,
officer, I didn’t see it coming,” I ventured the opinion that the State of
Illinois does not set the licensing bar for automobile drivers high enough, and
offered Britain’s system of testing drivers as an improvement.
I did, however, note that Britain’s driver standards are not at all
the toughest in Europe. Today I see that Steve Huntingford, the cars
editor – yes, children, you can grow up to be such a thing – of the Telegraph
newspaper, explains
why. He was reacting to the fact that a driver hogging the passing lane was
fined the equivalent of nearly $1600 and assessed five penalty points on his
license. The fine was unusual, and Huntingford believes it shouldn’t be, as the
practice there is widespread.
The trouble is the reason many people look for any excuse
not to change lanes is because they lack the confidence to do so. And that is
down to the inadequacies of the current driving test, which simply doesn’t
prepare people for many of the challenges they’ll face on the road, be it
driving on motorways, in bad weather or at night. This has big safety
implications.A study by the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory suggests
that a move to a graduated licensing system, where learner drivers don’t
qualify for a full license after passing their test, but instead have to log
120 hours in different conditions, would “result in annual savings of 4,471
casualties” for drivers between 17 and 19 years old.In fact, graduated driving licenses were primed to replace
the current system following the last Government’s own research, before
politics got in the way, with them putting it on the backburner for fear of
scaring off some voters.
Ah, yes. Drivers vote – another complex act which we allow
people to perform in public without sufficient proof that they can do it. So
the next time you’re stuck on the interstate behind some dawdler, don’t blame
him. Blame Democracy.
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2015.
