I didn’t see the news when the decision to not progress the change to 4:2:2 , but this august edition of “Matters of testing” confirms it has been well and truly parked. Matters of testing , the magazine for mot testers is available online or a download at the vosa website
http://www.vosa.gov.uk/vosacorp/publications/newsletters/mattersoftesting.htm page 11 has a comment regarding 4:2:2 and shows one reason why it was parked for good

I am not saying society should be blamed if a loved one dies as a result of bad driving. I am saying I don’t belive the driving test and the current method of driver instruction is to blame either. Of course improvements should be brought in when they are identified.

If a loved one dies because of a crimial trying to escape the police, the fualt is not the driving test. If a loved one dies because of a drink driver, the fualt is not the driving test. There are many situations where accidents happen where a changed or improved driving test is not the answer.

Daily on the motorway I see drivers driving too close, this is not the fualt of their teaching or the test, it is the fualt of the driver for slipping into a bad habbit because 999 times out of 1000 there is no immediate danger. It only takes one person to slip up and what could have been a 2 car incident suddenly becomes a multi car incident because drivers were driving too close. Driving too close is something I was taught about when I learnt and I have every reason to belive that its still taught now, yet drivers still do it every day. This failure not the fualt of the test.

To reinterate something I said earlier, you can’t teach experience.

Something I am very critical of is the computer base observation testing. I do not belive that this is an effective method of teaching or testing hazard perception. As one instructor trainer told me, experienced drivers tend to get a low score on these tests as they spot the hazards too early and the computer does not register their score. The trainer then went on to tell me how she instructs would be instructors on overcoming this to get a better score. This is not learning hazard perception, this is learning a computer game. Hazard perception can only be learnt out on the roads, which means being exposed to genuine hazards, that only happens through extended driving experience.

After they pass their test, young drivers go out on the road with their friends and are instantly in a situation they have never been in before. They don’t have an experienced driver next to them and they are probably playing music, something they would not have had when learning. If they have friends in the car they have all those conversations to distract them. Its even possible they are in a car that they did not learn in, so controls and handling charactersistics might be different too. All this adds up to a situation that conspires to encourage a young driver to slip up!

This is one reason why I wholly support active policing, so people who make mistakes on the road can be stopped, shown their error, and sent on their way wiser and safer.

The stats are from the DfT – the Driving Standards Agency has more about this on their website.

We like the PassPlus course – taken during the first year of driving it covers motorway, bad weather, night time driving, town/country roads. Would like to see more novice drivers take this. Many Local Authorities subsidise it and some insurance companies offer discounts.

Maybe the high number of deaths isn’t to do with the driving test directly but this is the barometer we use to let drivers loose on our roads and it is the young men that are causing most of them.

I don’t think I would blame society if members of my family were innocent victims.

Btw, the DfT has just completed a consultation process, with all sorts of suggestions to improve the test. Fingers crossed this makes a difference to these stats.

Kind regards

FOXY Steph

The stats you quote certainly are alarming when laid bare like that. However, in that raw form they don’t actually give any helpful information. There needs to be further detail behind those stats that gives an indicator as to true cause. I would like to see answers to questions like:
- what are the true numbers? Alarming statistics become meaningless if the numbers they are based on are small.
- when is the time period those stats were taken from?
- is there an historical trend that can be glened from previous time periods?
- what other factors are involved in these offences?
– I am thinking drink, drugs, crime.

People who would normally drive sensibly can be driven (pun intended) to drive far worse than their normal standard when outside factors are allowed to influnce them.

You can’t teach potential behaviour distractions in a driving lesson.

Likewise with new drivers, inexperience will always result in more accidents for a given age range. You can’t teach experience, experince is a self learning process and different people manage it differently.

Specifics where inexpereince will show is unfamiliar driving conditions, such as bad weather, unknown roads, carrying passengers who do not have years of driving experience, distractions (both in car and out of car). None of these things can be effectively taught because you can’t possibly teach every possible future experience.

There are many things that drivers can do to increase their driving skill after they have passed their test. Advanced driving courses and track days are the most obvious and there are many options to choose from.

When you say “We are doing something wrong.” its not clear what your context is, something is wrong yes, but I don’t agree its with the driving test and driving lesson. My opinion is the problem is with the wider society, hence my points about the detail behind the statistics you quote.

This is the glory of blogs – you can have a much needed rant on occasion and feel much better afterwards!!

Do call again…

Steph

I agree with many of your thoughts.

Just for the record, women are more likely to hit a stationary car (?) and twice as likely to have a collision in a car park (but let’s face it, there are more than twice as many women in supermarket car parks in the first place…). The age profile for both is of older women (60+) and FOXY is definitely in favour of more refresher driver training throughout a motoring career to do something about these lapses in concentration.

However, of the motoring offences caused, 96% of all dangerous driving offences, 94% of those causing death or serious injuries and 86% of all speeding offences were caused by men. That speaks volumes.

Of novice drivers, 1 in 5 have an accident in their first year and this rises to 1 in 3 if aged 17 to 20. Scary.

My conclusion is that men are more confident learners, pass with less lessons than women (as the stats confirm) but most aren’t ready to drive because of the accident stats. We are doing something wrong.

That’s all. I don’t know what anymore than the DfT or they’d cure this but I care desperately about all this because it is SO avoidable.

Any ideas?

You quote the statistic that more fatal and serious accidents are caused by young male drivers. There is also a statistic that says women drivers have more minor bumps and car park scrapes, many of which go undeclared. Relying on statistics to decide which is the better driver will give a different answer according to the statistic used.

Personally, I don’t think one sex is better than the other, there are different sterotypes that fit each sex so I am happy to generalise and say we are just different in our approches.

Your title asks if women take driving more seriously. I would say that also depends on who you measure it. Just because more men may find it acceptable to speed does not mean men take driving less seriously, those very same men could be paying more attention to the road in front and noticing changing traffic conditions earlier, making them less likely to get caught out. Who then is being more serious about driving?

I certainly dont agree that a learner undergo a specified number of learning hours before being tested, they should be tested when they are ready, however long it takes.

What I would certainly welcome is a tiered licence somene who has recently passed can only driver cars up to a certain power and must take an extra test to drive higher performence cars. This would certainly reduce the number of inexperienced drivers that get behind the wheel of cars they can not handle.

This all makes a lot of sense now. Good for SEAT picking up the baton ahead of others then.

Clearly I had not understood the online saving for the taxpayer, agree with you that saving £30m over 3 years is a BIG GAIN and feel a bit mean about seeing this purely in a ‘commercial’ light.

I also recognise that this might be a tough job getting that message across; maybe FOXY can help via a female motoring audience in future.

I was at the Motor Show yesterday, saw the SEAT Ibiza EcoMotive 1.4, had ‘green, economy and price’ at the top of my car shopping list and felt it scored highly in terms of all three.

And I renew my car tax online btw; I find it highly convenient but I also feel guilty about taking business away from our wonderful local post office in these times of cuts and undoubted community need…

Such is life…and the relentless drive to provide more for less .

FOXY Steph

My name is Andrew Rhodes and as Customer Services Director at DVLA, I’m actually responsible for this promotion. I found your blog very interesting, and I hope you don’t mind me responding.

This scheme has been running since 5 June 2008, and we have now had the first 3 winners who received their keys at the Motorshow in London yesterday. The plan is to run this scheme for a whole year, which will mean that all 33 million vehicle keepers will get the chance to enter.

The reason we are doing this is to raise awareness of the online and phone facility. Given that you’ve posted a blog on it, it certainly seems to be a talking point! It’s actually very simple to use with no need for paperwork and takes just 4 minutes.

We offerred the chance to all 17 manufacturers of cars in bands A or B (<120g/km CO2) and SEAT were selected. For every extra customer we get to use the online service, the taxpayer saves money. We expect to save the taxpayer £30M over the next 3 years and this scheme is a big part of that. We are doing something ‘commercial’ because we know it works and is common in the private sector as a result. A big part of our job is to run our services as effectively and efficiently as we can, so I think this is something that we should definately be doing – even if it is unusual for the Civil Service and looks ‘commercial’.

DVLA has not paid a penny for the cars at all and if you still feel uneasy, you can always opt out of the draw. If you haven’t used the online or phone service before then I really hope you do give it a try.

Andrew Rhodes