30 Failed Driving Tests Should Mean An Instant Ban On Driving

Image: Metro.co.uk

"Everyone travelling slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster is a maniac." George Carlin, comedian.

Old George is pretty astute. It's amazing how many idiots and maniacs there seem to be about, and every one of them seems destined to make our lives on the road a misery.

The subtext behind Carlin's quote though is that we're probably just as much at fault as the idiots and maniacs - by definition, we're an idiot's maniac and a maniac's idiot. Makes you think, doesn't it? And it makes rational discussion of driving standards pretty difficult, because something you might consider atrocious driving may not be seen that way by another driver.

Take the automotive world's whipping boy, the Toyota Prius and its drivers. How often have you seen one being driven at breakneck speed and thought, "what's the use in buying an economical car if you're going to drive it like that?"

Yet, when you inevitably happen upon one going slowly, driving economically, they revert back to smug environmentalists - ready to hold everyone up to save a few drops of fuel. The fact is, you'll not notice the majority of Prii because they're simply going along with the rest of the traffic.

Bad driving then - or driving we think is bad - stands out. We interact with hundreds of vehicles every day that aren't driving appreciably worse than anyone else, and for that these drivers should be applauded. It's just a small minority that ruin it for everyone else - like the class clown at school whose actions would deny everyone their break time or get everyone within a five meter radius a detention.

A news story broke earlier this week on the UK town with the worst learner drivers - Heckmondwike in West Yorkshire. A handful of drivers, all women in their mid 30s to late 40s, were taking 30 attempts or more to pass their tests.

That isn't driving lessons, but actual test attempts.

Far be it from me to deny the £10,000 extra income this has generated for the local area between their repeated failures, but I can't be alone in thinking that after far fewer than 30 attempts they should have had their provisional licenses revoked and banned from getting behind the wheel ever again. There's every chance that, even on the thirtieth and successful attempt, they scraped through by the smallest margin, no less crap than when they took their first unsuccessful test dozens before.

Nothing you fail that many times in a row should be something you're allowed to continue. How many times can you re-sit a school qualification before they send you on your way with either half marks or no qualification at all? How many times can you cock up something important at work before they fire you? I suspect most employers would get tired of you inputting a customer's details wrong or cashing up incorrectly maybe three or four times at most before letting you go.

Image: BSM

What worries me more is that 30 test attempts is news. Not that it shouldn't be, but anyone taking their driving test a third of that amount is already a liability in my eyes - maybe even a sixth of it. And those repeated failures aren't even bad enough to be reported, it seems - not every test failure is as bad as this one...

Okay, not everyone passes on their first attempt. For some, it can be bad luck, or others may just make a silly mistake. It happens, and it's human. Out on the road, another road user indicating and swinging into a side road at the last minute can be frustrating, but it happens. It's probably happened to you at some point, as you've realised you're about to miss a turn.

But equally, too many mistakes and you put yourself at risk on the road. You're controlling well over a tonne of metal at speeds much higher than the human body is designed for, and that's not a scenario in which you want to make repeated errors. Five, six, seven tests down the line, you're proving that you're better at making potentially dangerous mistakes than you are at driving, and such a person should not be allowed on the roads.

You can lay blame on both the instructors and the drivers themselves - the former, no doubt rolling in money from repeated lessons and tests, should have the morals to deny dangerous students the privilege of continuing. The dangerous, incompetent students themselves should accept that they simply aren't cut out for driving and curtail it before someone gets hurt.

Instead, we have a scenario where the roads are no doubt full of those who were poor enough at driving to take their test a dozen times, but somehow scraped through.

Is it any wonder that we meet people on a daily basis that don't indicate, can't turn in the road, drive 40 mph whether going past a school or on a motorway, tailgate, change lanes without warning, crash into lamp posts, hog the middle lane on motorways, slip off the clutch and ram you in traffic, bump your car while parking, don't know how to negotiate a roundabout, run red lights and more?

It shouldn't be. The testing system has failed us, and modern society's sense of entitlement means even the worst of drivers feel they deserve to be there as much as anyone else. 30 failed tests or not, they've "earned" it.

Won't change though, will it? At the very least, you now know to avoid Heckmondwike...

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