Revisiting driver’s ed, or do we really need to retake those tests?
WROTE this piece almost two years ago and a reprint seems apropos given the
and the repeated claim
that
authorities who parrot this line also think that draconian efforts are required, with one solution – working back – is that a driver’s exam retake be required starting next year for all license renewals.
in the metropolis happen to have the most recorded
majority of these violations are committed by public transport drivers who “load/unload” in prohibited areas and zones. “Swerving”, “coding” and “obstruction/illegal parking/stopping” violations are just chocolate sprinkles on the bigger cake, which makes one wonder about the also commonly held
to drive or do not know/refuse to follow the Land Transportation Code.
As the lousy driving continues to this day, the same popular thought that only better driver education and training can produce better on the road behavior persists. This leads to the belief that most licensed drivers today got away by “buying” or “corrupting” some functionary to acquire said driver’s license without passing the practical and written driving exam. To ferret out generation upon generation of lousy drivers, licensed drivers at some point in time, must refresh and retake the driving exam in order to validate if their driving skills are still up to par and that their previous license was legitimately obtained.
Through all my motoring years, it has always been an accepted conclusion that too many drivers here do not know how to drive. The evidence cited is
- tions on the MMDA’s mayhuliba.com website and the i/ACT campaigns on Metro Manila’s alternate
horribly bad driving, hence the aged conclusion that our drivers have to be taught better.
Generally speaking, we never tire of government anti-corruption programs and anti-red tape be ejected again and again. Fact is, the availability
cost, least effort and least inconvenience. Some of us are no strangers to a re-take that comes with a convenient pre-exam seminar refresher course. This comes as a penalty consequence of “reckless driving/speeding”. That is, if we didn’t succumb to the temptation of paying for a “waiver” to opt out of the seminar and exam.
Take note, though, that over the past two decades there has been a proliferation of proper driving schools. For all intents and purposes, it can only be good business considering the newness and number of their school cars and extensive private driving courses. We must be producing better drivers than during my time, when driving school was usually the family driver teaching us on some abandoned road inside an empty subdivision. In my day, the few driving schools extant required you to bring your own car and the few schools that had cars, for which they charged highway robbery prices, were in such bad shape that the driving instructor doubled as a mechanic.
If you look beyond the broad condemnation of drivers skills these days, it is plausible to believe that today’s drivers should be better educated than us drivers who learned how to drive in the 1960s, give or take the trial and error mistakes we committed to get to our level of competence/incompetence today. I have had household staff take driving courses in the excellent but now defunct AAP Driving School and believe me, comparing like for like, i.e. driving aptitude immediately after “graduation” with myself as the “control dummy”, I was shamed by their
Driving school not only has lots of current model air-con school cars, it also has a couple of extensive driving courses. Honda’s driving academy for both car and motorcycle owners has one of the best facilities in the region. It is the benchmark and there should be more of them.