Mankind has been evolving (unless one believes the branch of science fiction that calls itself ‘religion’) for tens of millions of years.
In that time we have:
- crawled from the primordial soup
- staggered on to our hind legs
- found the most efficient bipedal way to walk
- learned to craft tools, weapons, clothes, fire
- experimented with quasi-socio-political structural hierarchies
- decided that the one we dislike the least is a kind of benign, mildly-despotic type of consumerist-fuelled, borderline-democratic structure.
We have also fashioned a voting system which guarantees that only the most useless, short-sighted and intellectually-challenged members of our society are elected to office, to represent us.
And the lunatics, who are very clearly in complete charge of the asylum, are at it again.
The House of Commons Transport Select Committee have produced a report that says – what a large amount of ordinary road users have known for years – that the standard of driving in the UK ‘Is Very Poor And Must Get Better’.
*applause*
Some road users, say the committee, drive so badly that if things were better there would be less congestion, travel times would be quicker and there would be fewer accidents.
*more applause*
And what is the Transport Select Committee’s suggestion?
To have a new, stricter driving test.
*standing ovation*
Poor driving, adds the committee, is costing the UK £billions fiscally alone, never mind the uncounted cost of what bad drivers are doing to the blood pressure of other road users.
But.
The terrible standard of driving is going on now, yes?
Yes.
It is costing the UK hundreds of lives a year and £billions right now, yes?
Yes.
So when the new, stricter, driving test is introduced, it will be mandatory for all drivers – everyone out there with a licence *right now* – to take it?
Erm.
It will, won’t it?
Umm.
Because, as the Transport Select Committee has rightfully identified, it’s the people out there on the roads right now who are the problem.
The problem isn’t a bunch of people who have not yet started school, is it?
No.
So the new, stricter, driving test will be introduced as a mandatory retrospective?
Hawww.
No.
There, I said it.
No.
Amazing.
Well done, mankind, at having produced such a prime bunch of intellectual fucktards.
And well done for voting them in to office.
The Transport Select Committee are (just for the record),
Louise Ellman
Steve Baker
Jim Dobbin
Tom Harris
Julie Hilling
Kwasi Kwarteng
John Leech
Paul Maynard
Iain Stewart
Graham Stringer
Julian Sturdy
Well done everyone. Well done.
* with thanks and apologies to the excellent Jim Steinman, for him allowing me to use the title of his work in this way.
Ah you see this is the kind of wrong-minded thinking where it is believed if someone can pass a really hard test they will be brilliant at doing whatever it is the test, er, tests. Except, of course, we all know that’s a pile of crap. Nobody drives like they did when they were in the car with examiner on the day they passed the test. Nobody eats their cabbage when their mum is not looking.
It’s human nature which is best described by the boxing-glove-kills-people theory. When people used to prize-fight bare knuckled with very few rules (my grandfather being one of those people) the fighters would lose fairly quickly. Painfully. Blood-soaked. But the weird thing was most could not punch as hard and as brain-crushingly deadly as they could when padded gloves and Marquis of Queensberry rules became mandatory. If you had bare knuckles (actually from my granddad’s descriptions the hands were covered in a strip of cloth to reducing skin tearing) then you just could not punch as hard because your hand would break – bone on bone. Then strapping and gloves were introduced along with mouth guards and the punching power increased immensely with reduced immediacy of the effects – which meant that little wobbly grey lump of brain inside the skull could be shaken to bits again and again until you forgot how to see the color blue and thought your name was Cupov Teadear.
People drive like lunatics because they drive in cocoons of distraction and comfort. It is safe and one can hurl arrogant insults at the transgressors of one’s own impeccable standards of piloting and road etiquette. Braking can be last minute. Hairpin corners can be screamed at by the zeniths of tire technology which sticks like glue on a cashmere-lined table. Danger is distant and abstract and happens to others. A mild-mannered office dweeb bed wetter can throw gesticular death threats at a gorilla-sized shit-eating beast from Epping safe in the knowledge their car has central locking and can accelerate from 0 to safety more quickly than the lolloping bellowy beast can vault from his white van in your direction (traffic jams and traffic lights permitting – always check beforehand).
So.
Introduce car braking systems that engage laconically and with rubberised feedback for a sense of uncertainty. Adopt the concept mooted elsewhere of an immovable spike in the middle of the steering wheel with no seatbelts and mandate all interior car seats to be benches like the old buses with shiny, slippy faux leather seats on which you must grip firmly with your buttocks to stay on. Remove all bumpers and make the door panels from a form of plastic that shatters with an ear-splitting crash into 10,000 pieces on contact with shopping trolleys and smart-phone dwelling parking people who inattentively thump their car door/shopping/golfclubs into your vehicle. If the hazard warnings lights are engaged at any point when the vehicle is stationary make them call a grossly premium rate telephone number at the driver’s expense after the first 20 seconds of use which charges you automatically unless you provide an accident report. A recorded voice will also emanate from the vehicle saying “this vehicle is a HAZARD which is why the HAZARD warning lights are engaged” with each blink of the lights. Make the ignition switch detect subsonic bass noises emanating from within the vehicle and lock it irretrievably for 24 hours if the sound levels exceed a rate which can be heard more than 2 feet from the car.
Oh, and make all cars automatic gear change – nobody needs to be part of the gearbox and engine, it’s the 21st century!
I get better MPG in a manual than an Auto
Better Miles Per Gallon of what? If cars ran on clean non-fossil fuels with a top speed of 50 MPH we’d have no pollution (or newer, more exotic pollution), fewer road deaths and nobody would think it strange that there wasn’t a clutch pedal to fiddle with. 🙂
The world will remain rubbish and wars will be fought over gas, er I mean petrol if car companies are allowed to act like drug pushers and offer one choice: a petrol or diesel engine. Of course, if our tanks were not so well taxed then governments might actually try to do something about it…
p.s. I am not a tree-hugging greenie.
p.p.s. I do hug trees – but only because I love trees, there is photographic evidence of this. Also, although I am officially an alien I’m not green (I was born on planet Earth).
Better MPG than an identical car with exactly the same size engine but with automatic transmission, and better by a very significant margin. I drive for fuel economy (though not a slowcoach). Automatics are thirstier than manually-selected gearboxes.
And we know you’re an alien.
🙂
Take me to your leader.
ps: Well taxed? Well taxed?????? Not in the Good Old United States Of America (as I’m sure you know), they’re pretty poorly taxed in comparison to us poor suckers over here.
I bought my ‘gas’ at HyVee yesterday because I have a ‘coupon’ (voucher) from shopping there which gave me 30c per gallon of the..er…gas.
Price to fill up: ~$40 – or about 20 quid for a full tank. As my daughter would say “I know, right?”
I hope the price doesn’t go up too much or we’ll have to give up on Gadaffi, er Gahdaphi, er him..and attack the North Sea.
30c “off” per gallon. A confusing and annoying typo, bah.
Ian you make some interesting points and I agree with your analysis right up to, but not including the last paragraph.
First of all, although you are correct that testing does not measure willingness, it does measure ability. Judging from Bren’s rantings here and in the past I would wager there are some drivers who don’t know any better and tests would (or should) catch them out. That does then leave us with the able but unwilling, for which spikes may be a good answer.
As for the last paragraph, I think you might actually make the problem worse! You mentioned the driver’s disconnectedness with the vehicle – well surely an automatic transmission increases that? I’ve been driving manual transmission cars for about 20 years and will not swap to an automatic unless I have to for reasons of availability or disability.
I spent two months driving in Vancouver in 1997. (They were, and hopefully still are wonderful drivers.) Both cars I had there were automatics and one of them was a death trap. There was a particular corner I had to traverse on the way up to the office which had me holding my breath every day because the rental I was driving insisted on changing up a gear at the worst possible moment, massively reducing my control of the car.
Every time I drive in New Zealand I am easily able to spot people driving automatics by the way they drive. Brake! Brake! Brake! Engine braking is very effective in many situations, reduces heat in the brakes and my choice of gears allows me to configure the car for better response in many circumstances.
Perhaps if someone can be shown to be incapable of controlling a manual gearbox then they can be given a giant sticker for their windscreen and be allowed to drive an automatic, but having to manage the gearbox encourages a connectedness with the car, and the situation which, frankly, all drivers should have anyway.
In the state of Victoria in Australia, there are limits to the engine size for any car a new driver operates. That’s the kind of thinking needed. If everyone learnt to drive in a clapped out, carburettored 1300cc Toyota they might have a far greater appreciation of car control.
If you want to give everyone automatics to make things easier, then what you really want to do is give them taxi chits. Although, don’t get me started on the quality of driving from taxis in NZ!
Or, as an alternative, if everyone learned to pass a test in/on:
a) bicycle
b) 750cc motorbike
c) family saloon
d) 10-ton lorry…
… then we’d all have a much better understanding of the capabilities, vulnerabilities and limitations of all other road users.
I’ve never understood why people shouldn’t retake a test every five or ten years. My Old Mum when she was alive rarely drove. She’d passed her test after learning to operate a tractor and drove like she was still behind the wheel of one. She’d go years without driving and then launch herself (and us as young children) onto the public highway for whatever mysterious reason ..um..drove her. My baby brother is a drunken fool who should have lost his licence a hundred times. He’s almost manage to kill himself behind the wheel twice and has broken more cars than I’ve owned. He’s a bus driver so you can get some idea of his driving skills just from his choice of career. A driving test would have taken them both off the road and protected them and the public from harm and saved all the fluffy animals that they squished.
Of course if the government did that then they’d be forced to invest in some kind of public transport scheme and I just can’t see that happening.
Compulsory retesting would be nice. But, ultimately, a vote-loser. So no MP is going to support it. The current Part A and Part B theory test is actually very difficult. I retook both, earlier this year, to raise money for charity. I don’t think making the driving test more difficult will improve things, but rolling the current driving test out to all road users most definitely would.
Sir,
I think you underestimate the driving abilities of the British people.
Whilst there are a few bad drivers out there, the vast majority drive with great skill, observing the rules of the Highway Code at all times.
I spend much time on the road myself and am often in awe of other drivers and their driving abilities.
Why, only yesterday, I was driving on the M1, returning from work, when I saw several instances of drivers going out of their way to obey rules 3.9 and 3,15 of the http://www.st-1100.com/highway-code.html latest edition of the Highway Code.
So, I suggest you read the latest edition of the Highway Code yourself, and perhaps you’ll find that we are not all bad drivers as you suggest.
Yours sincerely
Col. Malcolm D Ashburn RN & Bar (9 points)
Dear Colonel Ashburn. You sir, appear to be in error. Since when does Her Brittanic Majesty’s Royal Navy have officers of an Army rank? And a Bar to an honour that doesn’t exist? Pah! You would more correctly be known as Commander Malcolm D Ashburn (RN), DSO and Bar. I trust I have helped in this matter.
I have also edited your comment, correcting the URI so that it correctly points to that wonderfully helpful document.
Yours.
“Objects in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are*” – shouldn’t this read “Objects reflected in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are*?
I loved your response to Colonel Ashburn – very amusing!!
Hi Annie. Erm no. It’s the title of a classic Jim Steinman song: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objects_in_the_Rear_View_Mirror_May_Appear_Closer_than_They_Are
Please god don’t make me do another driving test, there’s not a cat in hell’s chance I’d pass. I haven’t driven at the speed limit for 10 years and I sing along to the car radio, which I’m fairly sure is an automatic fail. I also yell at people while driving and call them rude names, again probably not smiled on by driving instructors.
Hey, I had to to take the Nebraska driving test when I came over here. They did not accept my full UK driving licence as any evidence whatsoever that I might even be vaguely able to drive a car without crashing (and quite right too – although I was annoyed at the time).
Weirdly though; speed cameras are illegal in Nebraska as are red light cameras. Nebraska also decided that compulsory vehicle testing – the equivalent of the UK’s M.O.T. test is unconstitutional as well and therefore it is also illegal and consigned to dust.
So, to recap: no speed cameras, no red light cameras, no vehicle testing (none at all – really, many cars are genuinely held together with duct tape and have windows that look like spider-webbed frosted glass) and yet bizarrely our ratio of road fatalities to population is 6 per 100,000 – slightly better than Iowa which has all of these governance and deterrence things. For the same period of time there were 24 fatalities in Buckinghamshire and and my beloved Milton Keynes. Note that this was “a record low”.
To put it into perspective – Nebraska is roughly the size of England (albeit shaped differently) although much of it is farmland. Omaha and Lincoln are the ‘big cities’ and that’s where most of the challenging driving occurs. Bear in mind too that for 6 months of the year we have 4 feet or more of snow with a windchill frequently below minus 15C and sometimes as low as minus 23C. With very few exceptions everything just keeps running – I bet we have more snow plows than there are buses in Buckingham. 🙂
It makes you think, doesn’t it?
Bloody does actually! You made me laugh with your comments to this post. You certainly like thinking outside the box 😉
Thanks Annie. In some ways I’m paid to think outside of the box so I guess thought-weirdness is actually a business asset. 🙂
B,
The self-described Navy “Colonel” would more correctly described as Captain, would he not? A Colonel is NATO OF-5, as is a Navy Captain, whereas Commander is OF-4. It’s a small nit picked, though, as the gentleman is obviously a pretender, and deserves the demotion.
On other matters . . . there is less and less difference in gas milage between manual transmissions and modern (with a capital M) automatic transmissions. With overdrives and locking torque converters, the gas-wasting slippage is virtually gone. Also, Based on many years of driving in the States, I believe that those who learned on automatics, and have driven them all of their lives, have no disadvantage in safety compared to manuals. Two pedals vice three, and no continual use of one hand on the shifter.
Thats my opinion only, your mileage may vary.