I've been driving for about 38 years, since I was around 17.
At the moment, I'm training to upgrade my license and an interesting fact came up during that training today.
I had to take a written test before I could get in the training vehicle, much like you do when you first get your learner's permit for a regular car. The test for being allowed to drive a transport truck is more detailed and challenging, but nothing most people couldn't do with a bit of study.
What's fascinating is that if I hadn't taken that test a couple of months ago, I might have gone 60 years or more without any sort of formal re-testing of my driving skills. If you don't have an accident or incident, no one will check on your driving ability until you reach the age of 80 (or in the neighbourhood, depending on your local laws) when age forces drivers to take a written test and/or some sort of cognition testing.
Think of how many bad habits the average person develops when they do any complex task regularly. Now magnify that by not having those skills and habits retrained regularly over decades. For the most part, we get our license to drive as teenagers, so almost every driver on the road has NEVER been tested for competency at the task in their ENTIRE ADULT LIFE.
When I climbed telephone poles for a living, we had a one year training cycle. We would review and retest on 12 different major skills, one per month, every year. Driving, climbing, electrical safety and nine other major skills got reviewed every single year. The safe driving review was only one morning of class and one morning of practical skills tests once a year, but it's still far more than most drivers ever get.
Unless your job has a driving component that your company reviews with you for insurance and safety reasons, you go through life, driving your 2000 pound death machine and nobody ever checks in to see if you're still doing things as well as you did them when you first learned to drive. As a teenager.
That is INSANE.
As eye-rollingly dull as it may be to have to sit through a review of basic driving safety and skills, it is the only way I know to keep those skills sharp and front of mind when performing repetitive tasks. It is SO easy to slip into a dangerous habit, since we humans so easily fall prey to outcome bias. If I don't signal a turn and there is no problem or negative reaction from the drivers around me, I'm more likely not to signal the next turn and so on. It's a terrific way to develop confidence in toddlers learning to walk but it can work against us and often does as adults performing complex tasks.
As someone who has driven professionally for many years, I can tell you that the "average" driver is terrible. Myself included, I've never, ever run across a single driver who believes their ability to be less than excellent, let alone one who believes they would benefit from a refresher course. You just have to drive for a few hours to see that the MAJORITY of drivers do dangerous things regularly and experience tells me that none of those drivers believe that they are one of the bad drivers on the road. In my humble opinion, anyone who believes themselves safe and competent behind the wheel should be willing to take (at least!) a written test on signs and road rules once or twice a decade and submit to a full in car driving test once a decade. AT LEAST!
I'm being retrained as a professional driver at the moment and it has opened my eyes to some of my own bad habits, accrued over decades of driving without incident. I may be accident and incident free, but I'm not nearly as good a driver as I believed I was before the training started. I have the slight advantage of a decade of yearly review of safe driving practices thanks to my previous employer, but it's been 5 years since I've done that and that's enough time to see complex skills degrade.
Beyond retesting, which I honestly think we should implement, I think there are other road safety measures to be looked at and brought more strongly to the public consciousness.
I know. Now I'm just bitching. My blog, my bitch.
The unnecessary carnage that happens on the highways and roads is almost entirely preventable. In my lifetime we have convinced almost everyone to wear their seat-belt, put their kids in proper child seats and reduced the once common practice of drinking and driving by a large amount, mostly with educational television commercials and school programs. We need to do the same with speeding, tailgating and reckless lane changes.
Until that happens, please slow down, back off and check your blind-spots.
Human error accounts for 90% or MORE of all fatal road incidents. "Accident" implies that there was nothing anyone could have done and that simply isn't true. Speeding, distracted driving and impaired driving combine to cause around 50% or so of all of those fatalities. That's three VERY preventable causes that kill more people every year than I care to think about.
Nothing is likely to make driving a 100% risk free venture, but we can and should be able to do a lot better than we currently are.
I'd also like to see automakers forced to limit the speed of any road legal vehicle to 130 KM per hour. That's 20 KM or 10 Miles an hour faster than any legal speed on any road in North America that I'm aware of. Why do we allow cars and motorbikes on our public roads that can effectively travel at double or more of the fastest legals speeds? We can and do limit the speed of transport trucks for safety reasons, so why not cars and motor bikes? There's no good reason not to do it. Anyone who wants to go that fast can join a racetrack and risk their lives in private, away from the public.
When I lived in Dubai, every driver seemed to drive within feet, if not inches, of the proceeding car's bumper. In my 55 years, I've been in 9 rear end accidents as a passenger. Seven of those happened in the three years I spent in Dubai.
If you catch yourself speeding, tailgating or changing lanes without checking over your shoulder, you probably do all those things a lot more than the one time your noticed. Bad habits compound over time and we all have them. The trouble is, if my bad habits meet your bad habits, it could be fatal. I think we'd be wise to try to work towards that NOT happening.
I didn't even mention texting and driving because to me, if I need to remind you not to do that you're already dead. Or worse, you will one day kill someone else, maybe someone you love. It just hasn't happened yet.
The political will to make the common sense changes that could easily, vastly improve road safety doesn't exist anywhere that I've run into. Maybe it's time someone bitched a little louder.
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