Driving For Life…Is this an Unattainable Goal? From all corners of the Earth and from most developed countries, there is a growing sense of unease and abhorrence at the senseless waste of human life behind the wheel.
Road accidents, which should more aptly be described as incidents, since they are mostly completely avoidable, are finally reaching a level at which Politicians take note.
Road Safety was not exactly top of your local Senator’s agenda...nice emotive topic to bring up now and again, especially close to election time when all other subjects had been exhausted, but not vote getting even if he or she did make promises to lock up all Boy and Girl Racers and throw away the key!
Over the last few decades some attention has been paid to monitoring road accident statistics, but nothing of real substance in the way of sound, logical and effective measures to combat the menace of Death on the Roads has been implemented by the majority of Nations.
This seemingly is about to change…and change it must if we are not going to be labelled the Generation that let a Generation destroy itself!
Since the early Nineteen Fifties prosperity in the developed Nations has thundered on relentlessly leading to an exponential rise in the volume of Traffic on the roads and with it of course, a massive rise in the number of Learner Drivers. A case in point is the Learner Population on the road in Ireland which equates to 10 per cent of the total population of the country. Twenty per cent of all drivers on the road in Ireland are Learners.
Young Learner Drivers are not endowed with an over abundance of common sense nor do they possess the skills to analyse in an instant, a potentially dangerous situation. This only comes with much practise and experience. In fact, without a sound foundation upon which to build this experience a good deal of driving practise will be totally wasted.
It may be fun to swan around for a couple of years getting into and out of various scrapes and near misses and the odd collision but this sort of untrained behaviour behind the wheel will ultimately lead to disaster.
Mandatory Professional tuition is the only answer to provide the necessary standard before a driver is allowed out on the road for the first time. In fact a certificate from a registered Driving School proving that the candidate has had at least a certain level of training is the only way to substantiate this.
It is estimated that in Ireland’s case the cost of Road accidents is now running at a staggering 1.5 Billion per annum. Even a small proportion of this figure would go a long way to creating the structure for regulated Training of Learner Drivers and stricter rules for those in their first three years behind the wheel.
As previously mentioned, moves are afoot to address the common problems that young Learner Drivers fall foul of consistently.
Curfews to prevent night time frolics are one of the ways in which accidents can be drastically reduced. The level of serious accidents in the small hours and the incidence of Alcohol in these statistics make it a useful starting point and legislation here will definitely reduce fatalities.
Carrying a reduced number of passengers as a learner driver will also have a beneficial effect on the number of casualties since it is sadly, often the passengers who die in a serious road crash and not always the driver.
More stringent rules regarding penalty points and alcohol consumption by drivers in their first three years after gaining a full driving license are already in place in the U.K. and hopefully will be embraced and enforced in Ireland in due course.
Australia is already bringing in far stricter laws for the learner driver in line with the above and interestingly insisting on a far greater number of supervised hours for the novice.
Unaccompanied Learner Drivers pose a serious threat to all motorists and this tendency to drive without a guiding hand is proliferating in Ireland but has become the accepted norm since there has been little or no attention to the policing of laws which prevent this activity.
The Provisional License in Ireland as it has been known for many years, is to undergo a metamorphosis in favour of a graduated License programme which is common in the United States and other Countries.
In addition to this, in a little over four years from now the whole of the European Union will have a new swipeable, credit card style license which will enable instant tracking of drivers (especially those transgressing the Law) across the whole of the continent, making for better security.
It is perfectly feasible and a noble but essential goal, to put in place a fair but firm regime for Learner Drivers the World over. The cost in human terms of ignoring the statistics does not bear thinking about. The cost to each State or Nation of road accidents and the subsequent fall-out is quite staggering.
It should be the aim of every Government to establish workable and effective Learner Driver Rules and Regulations and having implemented these to put the funds in place to Police them. Regulations that are left to gather dust on a shelf somewhere are of no use to man nor beast and are a great slur on the generation of young drivers who naturally are not going to police themselves until they are trained.
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Contributor's Note
Learner Drivers are not born with either common sense or magical skills which can be turned on with the click of a button.There has to be a sensible level of Legislation which will reel in those Drivers who are oblivious to the Law and who also choose to ignore it.
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