P – Plate Nonsense

When a tragedy happens involving young people I always find it interesting when the parents of these young people come out pleading for the govt to make changes to legislation so that another tragedy may be averted. They bleat like their little darling was at no fault at all. The most recent is the car accident that left all passengers dead but the driver survived.

The parents are calling for rules like curfews and restrictions to the number of passengers allowed in a P plated vehicle. These solutions have a few major flaws. Firstly they are very difficult to police. Secondly, they discriminate against some P platers that work at nights. Most importantly, I believe, that they all cover up the core problem. The fact that it is too easy to get a driver’s license in the first place. Being able to drive on the road should be considered a privilege, not a constitutional right.

I believe that the best way to improve our driving is to have certain number of compulsory driving lessons from a professional driving school such as Trent, on a manual car. Some organizations also run 3 day courses for defensive driving skills where they test how well they break in adverse conditions.

I’m sure there will be many bleeding hearts who will proclaim how not everyone can afford to pay for that. To this I would just re-iterate that driving on the roads is a privilege. Sometimes you have to pay for a privilege. If it’s that important to you then you will make sure to do it right. At the same time you will most probably have your eyes opened to the real dangers with driving and how your skills weren’t as good as your ego told you.

If you’re not willing to pay for this privilege then the State Govt is trying so hard to make every major road (it seems) have a transit lane only for buses, and ads on TV continually tell us how much work Cityrail is doing to improve it’s services.