Driver licencing must change?

[Adoom]

All the current licencing system does is teach people how to operate a vehicle and obey the road rules. It does not teach them to drive.


I think high speed practical(not theory) driver training should be a mandatory part of getting your restricted or full licence.
I'm thinking a mix of trackday and autocross stuff.

The theoretical defensive driving course you can do at school to shorten the time you are on your restricted licence should not be optional. Everyone should have to do it. Its pretty basic but some people just don't know those things.

The person who is getting their licence should pay for all this.

[Lloyd]

No, the test should actually be a test thats a bit stricter. Defensive driving theory does nothing. Practical will, but I can see it only making people want to drive faster on the roads.

The system isn't the bad bit, its the people behind the wheel. They can drive enough to get the licence (part of the problem) but then stop concentrating once they are out on the road by themselves

[TURCEL]

I dont think its people lack of skill that makes them a bad driver but the lack of confidence on the road (or to much confidence).

I jumped in the car with a work mate (asian lady born in the Philipines, in her 30'sand just had two crashs, one serious) and she lacked any decision making skills, she was to scared to take the gaps. I find in Auckland people are expecting you to cut in front of them and if you start indicating and driving up and down the road you will run into problems.

If people didn't second guess there decisions and committed there would be alot less accidents (this is Auckland driving). All you have to do is keep on your side of the road, check your blind spots, look further than the car in front of you and expect the un-expected.

[Emperor]

True that!
And then there's those in high performance cars who cant drive!! Or who pull out in stupid areas.. Do stupid speeds..

Coming home from work one day, I go through Exelby Road (for those hamiltonians that know it), doing 100 comfortable, get around a sharp corner.. Some idiot doing 50!!!!!!! in a 100. had to hit the anchors.

even on the straights he was only getting up to 60..
not trying to be ignorant or anything, but surely most people can drive the speed limit.

[Bling]

if driver licensing was that bad, everyone would be bad drivers.

[Infinite]

people who sit on internet forums bitching is just as bad as some one doing 50 in a 100k zone, but hay all of you are flawless drivers so you can talk

[TURCEL]

people who sit on internet forums bitching is just as bad as some one doing 50 in a 100k zone, but hay all of you are flawless drivers so you can talk

Yeah and people who bitch on the internet about people bitching on the internet?

Well.. touching wood.. I have never crashed a car... (or been crashed into) in five years.

[MrOizo]

...Coming home from work one day, I go through Exelby Road (for those hamiltonians that know it), doing 100 comfortable, get around a sharp corner.. Some idiot doing 50!!!!!!! in a 100. had to hit the anchors...

For it being a sharp corner you prob shouldnt have been going the speed you were...

I guess its the whole "Drive to the conditions" jingle that you should have been singing

I can see where you are coming from but you have no idea what could have been around that corner.


As for the young drivers - they are given far too much responsibility too soon - they don seem to care abou anyone and and consequences... the punishments seem to be too light.

[matt dunn]

No, the test should actually be a test thats a bit stricter. Defensive driving theory does nothing. Practical will, but I can see it only making people want to drive faster on the roads.

The system isn't the bad bit, its the people behind the wheel. They can drive enough to get the licence (part of the problem) but then stop concentrating once they are out on the road by themselves

To pass the defensve driving course all you have to do is turn up.
I was so bored I think I even fell asleep during part of it and still passed.
100% useless and waste fo time.

Prodrive is the sort of stuff that people need to do.
I have been a tutor for it down here a few times and you would not believe the abilities of some poeple who have there restricted.

I also believe that an automatic only licence is BS.
If you cant drive a manual you cant drive.
1/2 the girls we had used one foot for each pedal, and controlled low speed by adjusting the pressure on the brake, ( in a maual !!)
When you yell stop they panic and have absolutly no idea wht to do.
and usually end up jamming hard on the gas and the clutch at the same time.

Most of the people when they get too close to the cones at speed just jam on the brakes hard on and lock up all the wheels and close there eyes till the car stops.

These people has passed a liscence test and done a defensive driving course.
All the current system really does is check you know about stop signs, when to give way and not to speed on your test.

[Emperor]

...Coming home from work one day, I go through Exelby Road (for those hamiltonians that know it), doing 100 comfortable, get around a sharp corner.. Some idiot doing 50!!!!!!! in a 100. had to hit the anchors...

For it being a sharp corner you prob shouldnt have been going the speed you were...

You're right. But it wasnt exactly a Laguna Seca corkscrew, so not hard to do the speed limit on.

[Dirtbag]

Prodrive is the sort of stuff that people need to do.

damn straight, i did prodrive here in chch couple of years ago now, and whilst I didn't really learn anything, i got to put alot of what I thought into practice, got to feel how the car feels locked up going straight even with near full lock, understeer, oversteer, ye old pulse braking. Me and mate who was doing it with me at the time got talking to the instructor, and he had some good stories to tell of people doing stupid shit, thats why that had installed blocks under the accelerator pedals, the movement in the pedal was just enuf to get it started, floor it and let the clutch out.

Something like prodrive is alot better than any defensive driving course, people usually never deal with understeer/oversteer/no steering because of locked wheels until it causes them to crash, prodrive gave me a safe area with trained instructors to go out, feel what it felt like to be at the "limits" of a cars handling and figure out a split second reaction kind of thing to get out of those bad circumstances.

I think NZ should bring in a log book kind of idea, with certain amount of driving hours day/night with an instructor/person holding license for 2 years before getting restricted. then having a far harder test for the full license, i was super surprised with my license, i was driving around for 10 minutes and the guy just announces, oh its pretty obvious you can drive well enough to get your full from what you've shown me thus far, lets go do a u turn and a couple of intersection hazard identifications and we'll call it a day.

I think it's been brought up many times, but mandatory insurance probably wouldn't improve the quality of the drivers, but at least it would stop 16 year olds from ticking up a wrx or evo and going off and killing themselves and others in it, have to have the insurance papers in your name before you buy the vehicle

/rant

[Pelo]

I also did prodrive when I was 16, just after I had just done my first driving lesson, "how to move the car 101" with dad around a car park!
It was excellent, I did reasonably well considering my lack of experience, too much gran turismo maybe?

Certainly taught me a lot about car control that I wouldn't have discovered any other way. Prodrive should be part of the defensive driving course I say.

I have lost count of the number of trackdays I have done, I did a racecraft course when I was 17 and may be doing another next month if I have enough money. I recommend reading the UK IAM Advanced Motoring books as well.
All of this experience has helped my on road driving techniques and observation skills.

The driving licence tests on the other hand were quite easy and taught me nothing. The tests should be harder, and compulsory, log booked professional training should also be introduced.
When I am King...

[AE86less]

The lisencing system has no care for driver skills, i know that i am a much better driver than most of my mates (A to B drivers), yet i failed my full lisence test for "Braking too hard" when someone pulled out in front of me and "failing to say you were indicating when merging" in the hazard identification section.

Overseas (I know Germany for a fact) have systems that really make better drivers, it is compulsory to get a professional instructor and log X number of hours before attaining your full lisence etc.

[malc]

plain and simple,
many people are completely useless

there is no easy fix

[Adoom]

plain and simple,
many people are completely useless

there is no easy fix

I feel a human culling coming on!!! Put some chlorine in the pool.

I guess some people dont 'care' about driving, they just see it as a faster way to get from A to B.

I know I'm not a perfect driver. From trackdays and those excursions on 'closed' windy roads I know pretty much where my limits are. But I got brought up around cars. I had my learners the day after I turned 15. I 'care'.

[TURCEL]

Ok... how about this for a crazy idea...

When you take your final test you are graded, not only on your knowledge the road code but your driving. The higher you get the less rego you have to pay... That would be incentive enough for poor drivers to improve. The test would have to be re-sat every couple of years.

[Mad Murphy]

Most people have shit knowledge of the road code anyway and most drivers are lazy 75% of people I see on my daily drive to town don't come to a complete halt at stop signs and don't bother to slow down as they enter 50k zones from 100, this is particularly scary when its a suburban area with kids walking to school. Also, almost no one turns into the right lane.

People just don't have a clue what it takes to stop a car from that speed or that stop signs are there for a reason. I think hands on training would be good, parents should at least take their kids out to a paddock and teach them how to handle slides and skidding (knowing how to control slides has saved my arse a few times), guess there's some advantages to being a country boy.

I also think everyone should have to resit their licences every 5 years regardless, might weed out some people's sloppy habbits.

[79rolla]

iv still got my restricted and planing on doing defenciv driving, my mate did it last year and apparantly its not that bad here
i recon that a driving corse compolsery would be good as i would like to do one (after a close call or two) it would be good and would help stop the amount of absolutly usless drivers too...
just my opinion

(sorry bout spelling)

EDIT: also once i remember sitting with some girls and they were saying how if the car "skidded out" they wouldint know what to do and panic, and i couldint help but laugh

[Lloyd]

No, the test should actually be a test thats a bit stricter. Defensive driving theory does nothing. Practical will, but I can see it only making people want to drive faster on the roads.

The system isn't the bad bit, its the people behind the wheel. They can drive enough to get the licence (part of the problem) but then stop concentrating once they are out on the road by themselves

To pass the defensve driving course all you have to do is turn up.
I was so bored I think I even fell asleep during part of it and still passed.
100% useless and waste fo time.

Prodrive is the sort of stuff that people need to do.
I have been a tutor for it down here a few times and you would not believe the abilities of some poeple who have there restricted.

Likewise Matt. I came out of the course not really feeling like I had found anything else out but now had a certificate so could get next licence sooner, nothing else.

Prodrive was good and things were explained about why you were doing what you were doing and gave a real experience about what was happening etc and I found that to be far more valuable.



As for the shit knowledge of the road code, that is a part of it (don't get me started on roundabouts). Half of it is people just not thinking about the other people on the road. So so many people just simply dont even indicate to change lanes. 3 seconds before a manouvure? Most people get to where they're going and give it a quick flick to let you know what they have done. Like people finding a carpark, drive along at 20 until you see one, stop and then indicate that you have stoppped.

[Cahuna]

Prodrive is good... but then as another course tutor I'm biased!

To me bad drivers seem to fall into one of two categories:
1. Ability - this covers the people that you see who have trouble controlling the car, mix up the lefts with the rights, don't see the car coming out of the intersection etc etc. I think this is actually quite a small percentage but this is the group that would be assisted by requiring more lessons for the driving test.

2. Attitude - this is by far the larger group, who know how to control a car (sometimes at high speeds) but cause carnage. This is for a number of reasons... driving outside their skill range, driving too fast for the conditions, drinking and driving, showing off to their mates etc etc. Improved driver training requirements won't fix this group, denying them a licence until they grow up will (and taking the licence away from those who already have it but act like idiots).

Think about it. The kid in Hawkes Bay who died after fleeing the cops? He probably knew how to control a car at the speed limit but choosing to drive that road at 180km/h to get away from the cops indicate an attitude problem. If he had just stopped he would still be alive. Street racers who wipe out? Same thing. Teen with car load of mates doing 120km/h in the rain and sliding into a power-pole? Poor decision-making skills and stupidity. BMW-driving executive who overtakes on yellow lines and kills a family coming the other way from colliding head-on, just because he wanted to save 30 seconds from his trip by passing a car NOW? Ban him for life. I've been competing in ClubSport events for 16 years now (and was club champ last year) so I like to think I know how to control a car... in the 13 years I've had my road licence I've had one solitary crash - last year, at 10km/h, because I was tired and was driving on auto-pilot instead of concentrating on the traffic around me.

The funniest thing with Prodrive is getting 2 macho boy-racer dudes into a car with a little lady and then finding that the little lady comprehensively hoses them in the driving skill tests - the hit on the ego they take is a wonder to behold! Prodrive is a very good course for teaching students skills that will help them avoid accidents in cars but I like to think the biggest thing it gives the participents is a greater respect for cars and an understanding that when a car bites it bites hard (usually the first time they have ever been in an "out of control" car is in Prodrive, a much safer environment to discover what happens that at 100km/h).

To me an advanced driving skills course (like trackdays) would be bad news as it would only give new drivers an over-inflated sense of confidence which could lead to them doing something stupid. Much better to teach people how to avoid a potential accident in the first place with skills like the vision zones practical in Prodrive. I actually found the Defensive Driving course very useful, not because I learned anything but because it made me aware of techniques for avoiding accidents that I subconciously knew already.

The best accident is one that never happens and the best way for that to happen is to drive sensibly and defensively so that the situation never arises.

And talking of Prodrive... if you are a student on the North Shore or Waitakeres and haven't signed up for Prodrive do so now! It is currently operating out of Hobsonville (until the end of Oct) and, if you are really unlucky, you might even get me as a tutor

(sorry for the rambling rant... it is a pet topic of mine and I've had plenty of thoughts on the subject in the last 13 years!)