Last weekend I spent a lot of time on the motorways around the south east of England. Some of it was working, driving a truck, and some of it was, in my car, out of necessity rather than for pleasure.
I spent an awful lot of this time stationary. Why? Because there was a major accident on nearly every Motorway in the south east on both Saturday, and Sunday. M25, M40, M3, M4, M1, M23. Now when you are sitting in traffic waiting to move, you have plenty of time to think. I started to wander what had caused so many accidents in such a small area in such a small time, and came up with the ideal solution, one that will not only prevent accidents, save lives and make the roads much safer for all, but also benefit the economy, and the environment.
Everybody knows that trucks are dirty, noisy, nasty things that are driven by morons, who like nothing more than causing accidents and delaying everyone, but on the weekend, there are relatively few trucks on the road, however, there are millions of cars. Each car is driven by someone who, at some time in their lives has passed a driving test. Well, I hope that they have.
Now we all know that once you pass a test to drive a car, you are the greatest thing since mother lost here pride and sliced her loaf. You don’t need to learn anything else, you never need to undertake refresher driving courses, and no one can ever tell you how to drive. WRONG!
99% of car drivers take no further training after passing their test, unless they have a medical condition, or get banned and are required by the court to retake the test. You could have passed your test 60 years ago in an old Austin A30, and now be driving around in an Aston Martin DB9 without ever taking any further training. When you took your test, back in 1960, there were no motorways, very few cars could travel at above 100MPH, let alone 70MPH, Disc brakes, fuel injection, Diesel cars, radial ply tyres, as well as things like ABS, EBS and traction control, were way ahead in the future.
Even someone passing a test today, is not equipped to go out on the roads alone, and yet we let them, no requirement to undertake further training, no restriction on the vehicle they can drive, other than the cost of insurance. How many times do we hear the story about a young, normally male driver under 25, killing himself and possibly his mates because he thinks he is a better driver than anyone else?..
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