Quote:
Originally Posted by multiweb
Maybe our driving licence system should provide an incentive for good drivers and penalise harder the bad ones, so this way we don't 'pay' for the hoons. If you clock another year without speeding offence or accident then your speed limit gets increased. If you incur any kind of offence it goes down. Maybe linked to the point systems. You've got 12 you can do the speed limit, you've got 6 you're back to P, 3 left back to L regime. You don't want to learn, you walk. 
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The only problem with a ayatem like this is that some people think that they are "good" even "great" drivers because they don't speed and have never had an accident. My mother in law had one of those stickers on her car from the insurance company that said as much, because she hadn't claimed for 5 years or so, which, automatically made her an exemplary driver. NOT. I have never been sh!tscared as much as her picking me up from the train station and driving me to her place. It's just the fact that she didn't drive far or often that meant that she didn't have an accident. Put her on the freeway and all hell would have broken loose. We shifted her into a new house a few years ago, I took her car and sold it on eBay, then told her to hand her licence in. I think that she realised that it was time and didn't put up a fight.
Many people, here and everywhere, think that they are good drivers, I even thought so before I started racing cars. You soon learn what a good driver can do in terms of car control. I'm not one. I may be above average, but that's only because the average standard of driving in this country is appalingly low.
My daughter turns 16 in February, I bought her a car the other day (I have mates looking out for cheap cars), she will learn to drive in this car, then drive it around. She will also do at least two driver training courses (run by the Alfa club, open to everyone, plug, plug, plug) before sitting her driving test. She will do her madatory hours behind the wheel and then some. Driving is something that we can all continually improve upon, no matter how good we are at it.
Now with the money the State would save from not running pointless "Speed Kills" ads we could send all our kids through an advanced car control course. Then we would be increasing the average skillset of our drivers, it'd take a while to show, but as our young'uns are overrepresented in the road toll stats, there's the place to start.
Cheers
Stuart