Government New Provisional Driving Licence Plan

MrPudding

jhegarty wrote:

where did you do your test ?

In Ireland you are only marked for faults , there is no credit for good driving.

Thats as maybe but if someone jumps in front of you and you react correctly then there is no fault for you to be marked down for. Do you know what I mean? Yes, you don't get bonuses for good driving but good driving does not attract faults therefore you get marked down less.

MrP

Capt'n Midnight

jhegarty wrote:

that would cause choas... one silly mistake on your 5 year retest and you loose your job that requires a car....

In most other countries this would mean you being off the road for at most two weeks while waiting for a retest. (or in Oz it could be a case of "come back this afternoon" )

Or do it like the NCT, you have a period of grace within which to do a re-test.

Obviously anyone deemed to be dangerous would not get this period of grace.

Yeah I'm really upset that the number of driving tests done is going down. Also at current pass rates it would take appox 3 YEARS to test everyone once.

Its totally impractical to only ban people when they have sat a test as this would mean people trying to pass would be penalised by potentially being off the road for months, while those muppets that have been avoiding a test for years because they haven't a snowball's chance of passing will continue to drive unregulated.

It would be fairer to start banning people who have driven the longest without having done a test and gradually reduce this to the point where you can't renew your provisional without having done a test - not just the present system of applying for a test you can later postpone.

Oh yea the driving unaccompained and driving on motorways should be enforced ASAP - bringing in new laws with minimal enfrcement means that it's a lottery rather than justice. People could rightly feel that they have been "unlucky" to be caught rather than feel they are being punished for any wrongdoing, an example here would be the measured figure of 98%+ of cars breaking the speed limit on some (then) 30mph sections of urban link roads.

b3t4 wrote:

Ok, so everyone here is like get lessons, get lessons, get lessons but ANYONE with a full license can set themselves up as a driving instructor.

I've posted before that they could have got that license in the 1979 amnesty or if older have bought it (before 1965?). Someone who has never driven can give lessons. Or they could have been lucky and fluked the 20 minute test - we've all heard of stories about that. When I did my test one of the others was reversing around a corner and stopped the car midway around. Tester told him to drive back to the centre when he was told that he'd missed a wheelie bin that could have been a child, and that's why he was passed. Yer man doesn't remember seeing the bin. In other countries you need three years of clean license to give lessons.

b3t4

b3t4 wrote:

I've read these three pages and to be honest I'm quite shocked that the following has not been mentioned.

Ok, so everyone here is like get lessons, get lessons, get lessons but ANYONE with a full license can set themselves up as a driving instructor.

So what.
People should still need to pass a test to drive.

If you are a rubbish instructor you get no business.

Pherekydes

jhegarty wrote:

anyone can fail a test , someone runs out on the road in front of you... you fail , no matter how your react....then you are off the road for a year waiting for a re-test ?

Complete and utter drivel.

Who fed you that?

Rudolph Claus

Typical Ireland doing it half assed solution again. There is no way provisionals can be put off the road until the driving test waiting times are down to a couple of weeks. Even less than the "6weeks" that the Irish test centres state on the forms. Its laughable that they still have a 6week wait wrote on the documents when its really a year.
If people fail a driving test they should be able to get a couple more lessons and redo the test the following fortnight not a year later. Its a joke.

Pity some of the E30million the new gay byrne`s brigade has been awarded isnt going into reducing the fooking test backlog which has being a joke and a shambles for way too long in this country.

If they want to stop the road carnage all they have to do is sit outside the pubs and catch drinkers and sit on the backroads late at night and catch more drunks and racers. Instead they do the opposite, dont catch near enough of the drunks and spend too much time generating revenue catching genuine people doing 5/10mph over the limit in extremely safe stretches of road.

Rudolph Claus

"It is planned for when the test waiting lists are down to 3 weeks".
Oh i hadnt seen this statement before i posted above. That makes sense now.

Capt'n Midnight

Nuttzy wrote:

"It is planned for when the test waiting lists are down to 3 weeks".
Oh i hadnt seen this statement before i posted above. That makes sense now.

Makes even more sense when you realise at the current rate it means they won't actually have to do anything during the next term in office :mad:

According to Department figures released to Deputy Shortall, there are a total of 410,602 unqualified drivers on our roads at the moment. These include:

*29,044 on their 5th or more provisional licence
*31,455 on their 4th provisional licence
*39,676 on their 3rd provisional licence
*100,780 on their 2nd provisional licence
*209,647 on their 1st provisional licence

In 2000 there were 162,696 tests, in 2001 there were twice that number of licenses (325,000)

Tests dropped to 137,350 in 2005. And predictably the numbers on provisionals rose. 410,602 is three times the numbers of tests.

"Yeah we'll do something about it when the queue drops to 3 weeks" :rolleyes:

Lets imagine the unthinkable and they give everyone on a second or higher provisional a license in an amnesty. It would only be a stop gap measure because more people are getting provisional licenses than are passing the test. - nothing new here it's the reason they gave an amnesty back in 1979. The solution then and now is more tests. Whatever about the safety of the amnesty (they would make interesting stats) the fact that they did not capitalise on it to fix the problem once and for all means you can't justify it, or a repeat, even if the EU allowed it.


http://www.finegael.ie/fine-Gael-News.cfm/year/2006/month/3/action/detail/newsid/22090/level/page/aid/10/
http://talk-ireland.com/article.php?sid=2295

Fey!

:cool:

antodeco wrote:

Another riduclous thing in the system is that you have to pay for a theory test, each subsequent licence, and then the test. Surely this means, fail test = more money for a 3rd licence, and more money for resitting the test. This shows that it is mainly a money making scheme.

Does that mean that they can't cover the administration costs involved with the issuing of licenses and the giving of tests? After all, someone has to be paid for doing their job. Or should that be sucked up by everyone else?

Savman - do you display an L plate on both of the vehicles you drive? I know a lot of provisional drivers who don't display one. How am I supposed to distinguish between them and fully licenced drivers on the road? Also, how do I know that when I see an L plate that it's a provisional driver driving the car?

Generally, if I see an L plate I back off a bit. The reason for this is that the person is learning, so why put undue extra pressure on them? And they're entitled to make a few small mistakes. That's why it's called L-E-A-R-N-I-N-G!!!

Big Nelly - when you were on your provisional, did you never drive on your own? Or did you get your license during the '80s exemptions?

Also, pulling handbrake turns on the ice on a farm in Cavan doesn't constitute an advanced driving course. It also isn't the same as hitting ice unexpectedly at 80kmph.

Hagar

A number of posters have tried to excuse poor driving by provisional licence holders by saying that full licence holders on the road drive as badly or even more badly. How can they tell that it is a full licence holder that is driving badly? I do not believe for 1 second that every provisional driver has a red "L" on the back of the car. There are over 410,000 of them, the red "L"s would be everywhere and they are not.

MrPudding

Nuttzy wrote:

Pity some of the E30million the new gay byrne`s brigade has been awarded isnt going into reducing the fooking test backlog which has being a joke and a shambles for way too long in this country.

Well maybe it would have if the driving examiners and their union had not blocked the government from hiring more examiners.

According to Bertie, take with a pinch of salt perhaps, there would be no backlog now if the additional planned examiners had been hired last year.

There is something else the ordinary tax payer can thank Irelands fantastic unions for.:rolleyes:

MrP

GreeBo

Fey! wrote:

Generally, if I see an L plate I back off a bit.

Well I think you are in the minority on that one.
Whenever I am in a car with an L plate on it there is usually someone trying to driving through me.
Also they leave a nice 2 inch gap when I am stopped at lights etc, though the gap does narrow to 1 inch if we are on a hill...
It boggles the mind really.

Wolverine_1999

ninty9er wrote:

I would go so far as to say, being someone who has just passed my test 6 months ago, that there is a higher proportion of dangerous full licence holoders on our roads than provisional drivers.

Thats because the provisional drivers can't drive in the first place!