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I’m not sure that this idea has legs - at least I hope it doesn’t!

I’ve read on the BBC that the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety is suggesting that people could face a test of their personality before being given a UK driving licence as part of the driving theory test.

This idea seems to be so wrong in many ways - the first is that when does someone become unsuitable to drive? Where is the line drawn - surely we all have good days and bad days? What happens if someone with a “inappropriate” personality manages to get through the test, then on a “bad day” is in not in a good enough mood to drive?

If the idea was at all practical it would be a good idea - where it seems to be flawed is that there are two options:

1. Implement a cheap and arbitrary system that would not give you proper profiling and that would soon become next to useless as countless websites are created to give you tips to get around the test.
2. Implement an expensive and rigorous test which increases the costs of getting your driving licence - but still have no basis to say that it will make the roads safer.

It also seems that to be at all meaningful you would have to repeat the tests every 5 years and you would also have ot profile the entire existing driving population.

Then you will have to have an appeals process that will allow decisions to be reviewed - what do you do to people who are deemed unfit to drive in the mean time?

I hope this will get no momentum within government and it recognised for the crazy idea that it is, the only parallel I can see here is with doctors saying that a patient cannot drive any longer for example if they are epileptic - the system with the doctor seems to work much better here and doesn’t start from the point of view that every driver is flawed.

The recent paper by the Transport Commitee seems to suggest this ludicrous idea has been ignored.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 7:52 am and is filed under Driving Theory Test. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.