From today's Telegraph:
Seems like a step in the right direction to me ...
"NEWLY qualified drivers will be barred from motorways and from using sports cars following proposals to make the driving test more rigorous and the first year of being at the wheel safer.
The plans, which will be launched this month, will require learners to have a "certificate of readiness" proving that they have had experience of night driving, fast roads and rainy conditions before they can take the test.
After passing, novices may be forced to display green "P" plates for six months during which they would be banned from motorways and from driving minibuses or fast cars."
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What does the forum think of the move about Motorways ?
I recall, (having been brought up in a rural idyll) that my first exposure to Motorways was when I went to Uni., me my luggage in a Moggie Thou on the M6.
I feel that there should be encouragement to allow L drivers onto Motorways so that they are not unleashed on an unsuspecting public like I was !
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The facility to have instruction, once qualified, is there from driving schools at an extra payment but I agree that an element of compulsion may be needed. My daughter has not yet driven on a motorway after passing her test at 18 three years ago; the closest she has tackled to a busy M-way being the A14, which is probably near enough being a fast and busy dual carriageway, but the prospect of the M-way still worries her. I know who's going to have to go along to give her courage one day.
The more instruction these young drivers can have the better but I think it boils down to who can afford to pay at the end of the day. In daughter's case that was me paying for professional lessons and a day at Silverstone for pre-road experience which I highly recommend.
David
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Sports cars being the safest.......
Anyway, the insurance companies effectively bar them already!
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It is obvious that in some respects the driving test is inadequate in that it shows that you can control a vehicle on a certain day at a certain time and in certain traffic conditions.
Everything else is down to experience in the hope that when a new situation comes up you can cope with it.
The more situations that can be experienced for the first time in the company of another competent driver the better.
There was a sad case near here when a young lady passed her test during the day and crashed her car killing herself and a friend in the evening. Anything to stop that type of thing is welcome.
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Tomo's right. But if there was some way of banning kids from driving the sort of cars in the sort of places they kill themselves, then premiums for younger drivers would fall to a more sensible level and more of them would be able to afford to insure themselves.
HJ
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The best way of cutting accidents among young drivers would be to ban under 21's from carrying passengers unless they were accompanied by an adult. Most accidents among newly qualified drivers are caused by young males, and mostly in those cases they are carrying friends of the same age. The pressure to show off and not be considered a wimp is considerable influence among teenage males, and leads to the taking of risks that they don't understand and can't control with often tragic consequences.
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another major cause of accidents is new driver in daddy's car...
If you learn (as most people do) in a tired old 1.1 L vehicle, and suddely have a beast on four wheels at your disposal, anything can happen.
I know I nearly trashed my old chap's chevy within a month of getting licensed - fortunately when I lost control going too quick in the wet, there was nothing about for me to hit, and I ended up skidding through 450. Good job I wore my brown trousers...
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Tom Shaw wrote:
>
> The best way of cutting accidents among young drivers would
> be to ban under 21's from carrying passengers unless they
> were accompanied by an adult.
Surely, anyone who can get married and go to war (sometimes one and the same thing) can be considered adult. As can anyone who can vote or buy alcohol. I've got reservations about a law that says you can't take passengers until you're old enough to be gay.
A scheme similar to that used for motorcycling would be the most sensible solution in that it works, allowing drivers to become used to the roads on slower bikes. There is a performance limit on the machines new riders can use: even direct access bikes are restricted in their power output. Younger riders aren't able to jump straight from a 65mph 125 and onto a 150mph 600.
Also, younger drivers (and their passengers) don't all die (or injure themselves) as a result of driving flash, expensive, powerful cars borrowed from daddy. A humble Vauxhall Nova is more than sufficient.
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It might be argued that owning and operating a motor vehicle, being as it has become -- a universal required life skill, requires more than just a course of lessons at an age when many or most individual character traits have formed.
We might consider that an effective member of society now needs to have road usage understanding and etiquette introduced to him as part of the way his behaviour is moulded from a very early age. In this way he approaches his graduation to driving and joining the road using community equipped with similar value sets to those he is inculcated with in other areas of his interaction with society and his environment. I am suggesting that taking's one place as a user of the road system with all that that implies requires social skills and self-managing behavior as much as the mere ability to manipulate and guide a motor vehicle, and indeed may be a far more important requisite in being a competent and safe responsible person behind the wheel.
Just as one is taught there are certain thing one "does" and "does not" do as a civilized person, so perhaps driving behaviours should start to be introduced gradually long before actually taking the wheel. A civilised responsible person does not elbow his way through a crowd with complete disregard for those around him for example, or express simple diagreement with someone who via abuse and gestures, because he is taught that is bad manners. Yet the same person may not consider the same behaviors behind the wheel of his car in the same light because driving is a skills set that came late-ish during the formative part of life, and driving has never been put to him as a social behavior with norms and values to be observed.
After all, a vehicle is a potentially lethal instrument which it is easy to get hold of and use in a relatively unregulated way. The only determinant of suitability to have and to use is a piece of plastic issued after a rudimentary assessment of handling skills which cover only a few of the likely instances which will be encountered (see above posts). The character traits of the individual using it will determine whether it is used wisely or recklessly.
The day may come, when like guns, licenses aren't dished out without some background checking first. Right now, the ways of addressing the consequence of erring young drivers, whether deliberately or accidentally in error, is the reactive one after the (Often tragic) event one of "restricting", "making it harder" etc. Where also is the use of technology being considered, for example in use of simulators for training in difficult situations as opposed to the learning by experience hit or miss systems now in place? As a regular visitor to Singapore I bet that's one place this kind of approach gets raised....
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THe Growler wrote:
> Just as one is taught there are certain thing one "does" and
> "does not" do as a civilized person
I fear you've been abroad too long.
Regrettably there are too many people these days who have never learnt what one "does" or "does not" do as a civilised person. They're not all young: too many of them are bringing up children of their own.
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Why does this bother you if you are in Cape Town? Anyway there are drivers with decade of "experience" who still haven't got a clue about driving on motorways, a few more won't make that much difference, a godd driver will always make allowances for prats.
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Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
But here in the UK kids are taught "Road Skills" from an early age:
From pre-toddlers being held up to Pelican Crossing buttons so that they can watch the lights change as they are carried past, through being encouraged to treat the street as a play area, via being allowed to ride where and when they like unlit and with no regard to the rules of the road, never mind manners, right up to being taught that if the worst comes to the worst and a driver loses control as pedestrians have the right of way, and a car MUST stop before it hits them.
Is it any wonder that they play with their latest toys in exactly the same way as they played with their corgi cars and push bikes, and have absolutely no comprehension of the potential consequences when in control a ton of metal at speed.
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I find myself agreeing with Bogush here....I laugh when I see parents allow their children to press the buttons on an ATM and taking the cash out; they reap what they sow....
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we need to bring back cycling profeciancy training and testing in the schools and road safety and highway code education/testing/quizes etc in the schools
cyclist and pedestrian training needs more attention before they worry about the drivers!
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We need to point out that walkers can have the countryside, the pavements, the parks, the woods, the lakes, the streams, the shopping centres, their own bloody houses. But for God's sake let cars have the road, what drivers pay an extorsionate ammount of money to have the privilage of driving on.
Get that through to everyone and accidents involving pedestrians will drop, MASSIVELY.
Build more bridges across roads, more pedestrian crossing, more well lit subways, and get drunkards and small unwatched children away from the road.
A park is a very sensible place to play, a road is not. Until this is taught, no matter how many initiatives, how many reduce your speed adverts, how many speed cameras are placed, community police[wo]men there will always, always be accidents, and lots of little Jonnys will die. Not because of satanistic drivers, but because of left wing do gooders being adamant that children are never at fault in any accident.
Kev.
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If that's the state of UK then it's sorry indeed.
Asia may have its faults but the Confucian ethic of respect for your elders and others isn't yet generally one of them.
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How about a rule whereby any newly qualified driver who is convicted of any offence during the first 3 (say) years, would have to retake their test before driving again.
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I know that many newly qualified display a green P plate but I don't actualy know what the P stands for . Having followed one the other day I think the most likely possibilities are pissed, prat or pillock.
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P stands for Provisional.
Same as "L" stands for learner, and "GB" stands for getting better. :)
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Is it not "Probationer"?
Chris
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