Reading the original thread, the questions appear to fall into three categories, Education & Training, Government Policy, and the Why doesn?t he drive category.
*Government Policy *
I would suggest that as Transport minister he is, or at least should be, the person to ask about Government policy.
So we have two good questions on that,
Question 1)
"Why do you plan "Predict and Provide" facilities for air travel but refuse to do the same for road transport"?"
Whilst on the face of it this is an excellent question I fear this will just lead to a New Labour PC reply straight from the hymn sheet about pollution, global warming, congestion, public transport is the solution. All the stuff we?ve heard before, despite the fact that perhaps these are either incorrect or currently not viable solutions. Therefore I would suggest that something needs to be added to this one so that his options to answer in this way are eliminated. Suggestions please!
Question 2) Assuming Bogush facts are correct.
Why, when over 80% of freight and passenger transport travels by road, and road taxes paid greatly outweigh the sum of road investment and public transport subsidy, is ?Roads? a junior ministerial post and "Transport" a whole ministry largely devoted to bus, rail, tram and aircraft?
Suggest we need figures here please Bogush or A N Other.
Secondly the ?Why doesn?t he drive?
Question 3)
Considering that most of your personal travel would appear to consist of subsidised VIP travel and chauffeur driven ministerial cars, and in particular that you cannot yourself drive, it is felt that consequently you are totally out of touch with the transport needs and issues of almost the whole electorate which appointed you. Do you intend to correct this situation and how?
Finally ?Education?
Whole heap of stuff on education which distils down to strong feelings that
Despite the current driving test being harder than ever before, judging by the accident rates in young drivers, it is still not enough and does not tackle the problem of drivers who have not passed a test in many years.
Furthermore there is almost no education provision for other road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders.
The education for road users should be on an almost cradle to grave continual improvement basis.
It should start in schools and continue through the early road user years with graduated entry and access to more powerful vehicles by virtue of age, advanced training, probationary periods and regular testing.
Additionally qualified road users should get regular training and/or testing, which could be compulsory, thus keeping their skills and hazard awareness up to date in order that many problems could be minimised or removed by common sense and good attitudes prevailing rather than involving complicated and expensive legislation.
Now that is too much for one question, lets face it JY hasn?t the stamina to read that. It took me over a minute.
I suggest the following question 4.
?The education for road users should start in schools and continue through the early road user years with graduated entry and access to more powerful vehicles by virtue of age, advanced training, probationary periods and regular testing.
Additionally, longer qualified road users should get regular training and testing, thus keeping their skills and hazard awareness up to date. This could prevent much complicated and expensive legislation, and increase road safety for all.?
At this point I?ll hand it over to others for comments, editing, correcting my lousy punctuation what have you. HJ need your input/sanction whatever please.
Going to be busy most of this weekend so not much more input from me till Sunday night, sorry folks.
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Flat in Fifth:
After so many people have had their say, thanks for making the effort to prevent this timely plan from petering out.
I would suggest that it's over to HJ or Martyn now because the community can't really take it any further at this stage.
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Jeez - I am impressed.
You have put a lot more effort into this than "teflon" Byers will.
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FiF, one of the suggestions you made that qualified drivers should be regularly re-tested would be shared by most drivers. The implications, however, would be disasterous even if they could be made to work.
The DSA currently conduct 1.5 million driving tests a year, with an average waiting period of 6 weeks to take a test. If everyone was re-tested even as far apart as every ten years, then with around 30 million licence holders in this country then provision would have to be made for an extra 3 million tests per year. That is assuming that everyone were to pass the re-test first time which is a bit far fetched, so that figure would increase considerably with second, third, fourth, and umpteen attempts to get through. It would need a massive increase in the number of examiners and test centres, plus admin staff for the scheme to even get off the ground.
Next, what if you took the test and failed? I mean, we are talking about testing experienced drivers here, so no point in giving them a standard L test, which is itself a far harder proposition than the one most backroomers took. Any practical test is in any case comparative, ie the examiner will judge the performance of each candidate against an average set by the other candidates he has seen, so the pass rate is never likely to be greater than around the 50% which has always been the case with L tests. Now, I know exactly what a test would require of me, right down to the last mirror check and most of the time I could almost do it blindfold.
Most of the time! What if I had a bad day? We all make mistakes, and driving instructors, traffic cops, lorry drivers and everyone else whose living depends on their licence is no different to anyone else in that respect. Remember the awful nerves and nausea you felt when you sat in the waiting room before your driving test? Increase that by five because your salary depends on it and then go out and give a near faultless drive with a stern faced examiner sitting beside you! All re-testing would achieve would be a lot of unnescessary grief to the majority of motorists, who despite any shortcomings are among the worlds safest drivers, if you go by the accident stats of other countries.
You would also create the problem of a massive number of people who would continue to drive after failing the test, thereby ensuring many more uninsured drivers adding spice to your life when you are persuing them through the courts in the vain hope of getting your car replaced after they have written it off.
There is a place for re-testing provided it is targated at those whose driving warrants it. Those convicted of careless driving and upwards for example, could be ordered by a court to take a training course and a re-test before getting their licence back. But blanket re-testing of everyone, that would be a nightmare.
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Fair points Tom. Just logged in to see what is happening not much time to answer this fully.
Let's look at it another way.
One extreme is to do nothing. At the other extreme is the regime such as airline pilots have to endure with regular health and flight checks, failing either one of which puts them out of a job. In all probability the right way is somewhere between the two.
Now I suggest, and you seem to indicate the majority would agree, that the current system, which is more or less what you say in your last para, is not working and needs toughening up.
So do we take out the suggestion for regular retests in the question? Wouldn't all the driver training and testing industry which would spring up bring in a lot of extra taxes?
Maybe a compromise would be that taking an annual days driver training would reduce your insurance premium, carrot rather than stick?
I haven't an answer to this, so please suggest a reword of the question.
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FiF, I agree with your suggestion of a reward scheme for those who take extra training to improve their driving. One possible idea would be to introduce zero VED for anyone who has passed a recognised advanced driving test, such as the IAM or ROSPA tests. This could even be funded by loading the tax against those who have not done so. We are constantly told how each accident costs the country a multi zero figure, so it would be interesting to see if the government would put their money where their mouth is on a scheme like this.
The trouble with driver education is that it does not start until the peak learning years have passed, and the sooner road safety education is introduced into the school syllabus the sooner people will start driving a car with the right attitudes toward the subject already instilled. It is driver attitude more than any lack of skill behind the wheel which I believe contributes to a lot of the more serious road accidents. With past pupils, it is often those who learnt to drive in the fewest lessons and passed with a pat on the back from the examiner for an above average performance who end up wrecking their first car in the first six months of driving. The Maureens of this world, who are the butt of endless jokes and take loads of lessons and a few tests to pass generally end up quite safe drivers.
Quite how we reduce accidents is a complicated subject which needs proper research rather than the knee-jerk legislation that often comes from headline concious polititians.
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Someone has kindly emailed me with comments and suggested alternatives to the questions posed above, many thanks.
As an alternative to the predict and provide question the following is suggested.
"For many years a steady run down of public transport has resulted in the motor car being the only viable means of personal mobility, especially in rural areas. The Government seems unable to accept this, and seems bent on attempting to force people out of their cars and onto inadequate public transport. This is viewed by many people as a serious attack on personal freedom, and there is no evidence that the Govt' is putting a similar effort into providing an economic, reliable, clean and safe alternative. What is the Governments fundamental objection to the private motor car, which provides the majority of the population with a means of visiting friends and family, going on holiday etc which would be impossible on public transport?"
Seems fair enough to me. I'm happy to go with that as it really says what the majority of the electorate thinks. See cover story today's DT Motoring supplement!
Then an addition to the why can't he drive question.
This would now read
"Considering that most of your personal travel would appear to consist of subsidised VIP travel and chauffeur driven ministerial cars, and in particular that you cannot yourself drive, it is felt that consequently you are totally out of touch with the transport needs and issues of almost the whole electorate which appointed you. Do you intend to correct this situation and how?
Furthermore it is recognised that there may be security issues which dictate that a car is the safest option, but even so, why does the Government not levy a 'taxable benefit' upon Ministers who use Government provided transport in the execution of their duties, as it does on other drivers who also could not undertake their jobs without a vehicle?"
Quite like this add on, but wouldn't the simple answer be that the ministerial car is not used for private affairs and it is availability for private use which is taxed as BIK. If we all left our company cars in the firm's car park and travelled home on the bus then there would be no tax. Mind you be nice if our car park was secure, even the firm says don't park there overnight! Be nice if there was some evidence of Byers using the car inapproriately, eg like Jack Straw's driver getting nicked on the way to a Labour party meeting.
What do the rest of you think?
Finally another question trying as someone suggested the best we can do is show how out of touch the man is.
"Has the Minister ever discussed any of these matters with his constituents, and has he any idea what the real situation is like for the general public, in terms of motoring costs and hold-ups for drivers, or the alternative of inadequate and unreliable public transport?"
Better go, any more of this and it will be Tower of London next stop!
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Incidentally these were from John S, just so we get the intellectual property rights in order.
John thanks for the further comments and offer of assistance with this.
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Table 4.9 Road traffic: by type of vehicle and class of road: 2000
Billion vehicle kilometres
004.4 Motor Cycles
378.7 Cars and Taxis
050.5 Light Vans
029.3 HGVs
__________
462.9 Total Private motorised transport (including taxis)
004.8 Larger Buses and Coaches
004.0 Cycles
Note that motorbikes and cycles do nearly as many miles as buses (though obviously carry fewer passengers: not that many fewer though, I think it's an average of 9!;-)
1.2 Average distance travelled per person per year by mode of travel and average journey length: 1975/76 - 1998/00
1998/00 Percentage of mileage accounted for by car (inc. van/lorry) - 81%
As opposed to everything else including walking, ferries and planes.
1.14 Domestic freight transport: by mode: 1990-2000
Percentage of all traffic 1999
81 Road
4 Rail
7 Water
8 Pipeline
Note that the figure for rail is less than (half!) that for pipeline OR water!
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Thanks Bogush, isn't it more pleasant when we're not bickering?
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PS I believe that a very large proportion of the "freight" carried by the railways is the ballast for maintaing the track!;-)
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PPS I've just realised: perhaps people don't realise that when I post something that's underlined - it's not a rant, it's a link!:-(
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Thanks for the clarification. So it's just the black text that's not underlined that's the ranting?! ;-))
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>I've just realised: perhaps people don't realise that when I post something that's underlined - it's not a rant, it's a link
By Gosh Bogush - Not only very patronising but quick on the uptake too - can't get anything past you!
Andy S - More cant than rant, I'd say.
PJ
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Thank you both for those useful contributions.
Up to the usual level of the anti bogush debate I see.
I'll deal with you later Andy, I'm engaged in a battle of wits with Poxy at the moment, or I will be when he comes back fully armed!;-)
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I think we've taken this as far as we can for the moment.
Mindful of server space don't like to start a new thread but might have to with the final questions in next day or so as this will have dropped off the bottom of the page.
I'll do a final set and put them up asap.
Finally as its relevant to what we have been discussing.
BBC TV Monday 19:30/20:00 BST is a programme about traffic. ie the half hour before 5th gear.
It covers four subjects, worst traffic jams, Rhodri Owen asks a typical family to do without their car, Count Quentula argues the case FOR congestion charging plus one other subject which I forget.
OK its sound bite stuff but thought you might like to know.
"Evening all"
signs off to go and chase the rabbit round the garden to get her away in the hutch before dark. Ho hum, (not many new holes lately David!)
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