Kevin Burns, who has failed his driving test eight times, on why the Minister for Transport, Seamus Brennan, shouldn't put him off the road.
This time two years ago I made a confession in this newspaper about a particular problem I had. I recounted in a lighthearted way how, no matter what I did, I couldn't pass my driving test for toffee. I shared humorous observations about the six times I had failed. I was so smug, I even dared to make jokes about the driving testers and their comfortable shoes and slacks.
Now the Minister for Transport, Seamus Brennan, has made it his mission in life to wipe the smirk off my face. He wants me to "get off the road" and to take my four provisional licences and eight years of lessons with me. He has made it quite clear that my 350,000 friends with provisional licences aren't welcome on his roads any more either. Apparently we're almost 50 times more likely to have accidents than other drivers.
I'm sure I speak for the majority of the 1,400 people who fail the test every week when I say that Brennan has broken a red light with that statistic. Like many people without their test I've never had an accident and if I thought for one moment that I was a danger to myself and others I'd hardly start most mornings by strapping my young children into the back seat.
Not wearing seat belts, speed, drunken driving and erratic pedestrian behaviour are always cited in safety reports as the main reasons for road deaths. The recent success of the introduction of the points system shows that it saves lives to focus on these areas. By far the highest proportion of fatal accidents involve young male drivers aged between 17 and 24. The majority may be on provisional licences, but that statistic has little or no relevance to experienced drivers in their 30s and 40s.
I have plenty of personal experience to know that the way we are taught to drive and then tested is hopelessly inadequate and should be overhauled. But why are learner drivers now being asked to take all the blame for a system which has literally failed them? What about the driving schools who boast of 95 per cent success rates when, remarkably, there's a failure rate of between 50 and 60 per cent for the tests? If we are so uneducated as a nation of drivers, then surely the teachers must shoulder some of the responsibility?
If we really want people to improve their driving skills, then time and money spent on lessons with an approved instructor should be rewarded by merit points when it comes to the test. At present we have the ridiculous situation where driving instructors and driving testers operate in separate orbits.
The role of tester should be expanded beyond grunting instructions from the passenger seat and ticking mistakes onto clipboards. They should be able to spot the areas which need improvement and liaise with a State-approved instructor who could rectify the errors without the need for another test.
Brennan is adamant that 2003 will be the year that driving stops being a right and starts being a privilege. The announcement of the reforms has already led to an 80 per cent increase in applications for tests as people don't want to be consigned to a lifetime of giving lifts to people with full licences just so they can drive their own cars. But thousands of safe drivers who depend on their cars to drive long distances to work have a right to, and deserve, more than this "three strikes and you're out" ultimatum.
Back in 1979, the then Minister for the Environment, Sylvester Barrett, had a completely different approach to dealing with a backlog of 60,000 applications for tests caused by a combination of a nine-month postal strike and severe weather conditions. He granted an amnesty for anyone on a second provisional licence and, interestingly, argued that road safety wouldn't be affected because these drivers "would have acquired a reasonable level of experience".
Since then those drivers have built up an even more reasonable level of experience without any test or lesson and it's unlikely that Brennan will be inviting them to "get off the road". Our roads would be much safer if we viewed our driving skills as something which need to be honed over a lifetime and can benefit from instruction whether you have passed your test or not.
Of course my repeated failures have forced me to enjoy a lifetime of driving education and I'm a safer driver as a result. When my article was published two years ago, as well as letters of sympathy, I received a number of offers from instructors who read the article and liked a challenge. I embarked upon a series of lessons with a patient and excellent instructor from Arklow who ironed out my gear changing and road positioning problems. Making so much progress made failing tests number seven and eight all the more difficult for that instructor to take: as for me they had broken my spirit a long time ago. He did tell me that I had the least amount of X marks on a failed sheet he'd ever seen. But as the minister himself might say; "close, but no cigar".