Government have not thought the new car license laws through.

metrovelvet

Its a chance for greater revenue through fines.

However, since the government will lose a lot of tax revenue [about 50% of pump prices are taxes] through less demand for petrol one cant be surprised if a hike in motor tax or petrol comes about to compensate.

Why didn't they just hire more driving examiners?

pyrogenx

metrovelvet wrote: »

Its a chance for greater revenue through fines.

However, since the government will lose a lot of tax revenue [about 50% of pump prices are taxes] through less demand for petrol one cant be surprised if a hike in motor tax or petrol comes about to compensate.

Scary fact that could become true...

metrovelvet wrote: »

Why didn't they just hire more driving examiners?

Exactly, i mean with the amount of constant money flow they should definatly be able to do that.

purple'n'gold

When I hear Benchmarking Bertie and that Idiot Noel Dempsey I think fondly of the late great Stan Gerber Davis. (He used to write for the Sunday Independent) he once described Ireland as “the last great bastion of bullsh1t and codswallop west of the Urals” how true!

Nuttzz

pyrogenx wrote: »

Exactly, i mean with the amount of constant money flow they should definatly be able to do that.

they couldnt hire more testers as their union objected...

wow sierra

If everyone who is dependant on Driving on a provisional license decided to obey the law on Tuesday it would be like a National Strike. It would be wonderful to see the chaos which would insue if all those people didn't turn up for work.

There are waiting times of more than 6 months in most test centres. I believe the failure rate is approximately 50%.

There is NO EVIDENCE that an 18year old with a full license is less likely to drink and drive/speed/play chicken/road race etc etc etc than one with a provisional. There is no evidence that road accidents are caused by learner drivers - they are more likely to be caused by overconfident drivers.

There is NO PUBLIC TRANSPORT in most of Rural Ireland. I don't mean poor, I don't mean inadequate, I mean NONE. Most people are driving distances of more than 10 miles to work, many are driving 20 or 30 miles. Would ye propose that they walk/cycle/use a horse and cart?????

A huge percentage of the people driving on provisional licenses are in their 30s 40s etc - not 18 year olds.

Someone posted that driving is a privilege not a right - give us a break. Driving is taking resposibility for your own transport instead of depending on someone else for it. In many parts of Ireland it is a necessity - unless you want to be housebound and unemployed.

RedPlanet

wow sierra wrote: »

If everyone who is dependant on Driving on a provisional license decided to obey the law on Tuesday it would be like a National Strike. It would be wonderful to see the chaos which would insue if all those people didn't turn up for work.

I doubt you'll get all 420,000 of ye to follow suit however.
Particularly since one of the arguments made is that those people affected have mortages to pay.

wow sierra wrote: »

There are waiting times of more than 6 months in most test centres. I believe the failure rate is approximately 50%.

I agree there should be more testing centres, however i hope you're not making the argument that the standards should be reduced.

wow sierra wrote: »

There is NO EVIDENCE that an 18year old with a full license is less likely to drink and drive/speed/play chicken/road race etc etc etc than one with a provisional. There is no evidence that road accidents are caused by learner drivers -

I'm not sure of the numbers, however it does appear that a disproportionate number of fatalities are young males. I don't think the media inform the public if the driver was on a provisional or full. So certainly information in this respect is lacking.

wow sierra wrote: »

There is NO PUBLIC TRANSPORT in most of Rural Ireland. I don't mean poor, I don't mean inadequate, I mean NONE. Most people are driving distances of more than 10 miles to work, many are driving 20 or 30 miles. Would ye propose that they walk/cycle/use a horse and cart?????

10 miles is certainly cycleable, particularly by young fit males.
But it's not practical, nor safe on our roads.

wow sierra wrote: »

A huge percentage of the people driving on provisional licenses are in their 30s 40s etc - not 18 year olds.

what percent?

wow sierra wrote: »

Someone posted that driving is a privilege not a right - give us a break. Driving is taking resposibility for your own transport instead of depending on someone else for it. In many parts of Ireland it is a necessity - unless you want to be housebound and unemployed.

I posted it, and i stand by it. I don't for one minute believe that by electing to drive a car, you're doing society a favour.
I think the reason Public Transport is lacking is down to bad planning, but also i think, a pervasive ideology of "Let the Market Decide". That's why we have silly housing estates built onto agricultural land. Instead of being progressive and opting towards sustainable modes of living and transport, people want their little cottage on a green acre, and their big feck-off SUV parked in the drive.
On boards.ie you'll occasionaly hear of a poster living a few miles from Dublin city centre complaining about the traffic as he/she drives into work.
Public transport is certainly available to them, they just prefer to sit in their own comfy metal box on wheels, taking up loads of road space.
I'd say Public Transport is not going to be particularly viable in "Rural Ireland" due to distances between houses and the low density of population.
But why are they living out there, instead of finding a place nearer where they work? Surely a better model is required unless we prefer to cede most of our public space for the nearly excluvisue use of motor cars. (They'll need more roads to off-set the bottle necks, and then they'll need to be parked somewhere, i suppose the footpath is handy...)
Anyway, trains are expensive and the low density populations of "Rural Ireland" won't fill the train so it's always a net loss.
Buses and Bus Lanes are probably a better solution, however for Buses to effective and attractive, they can't be stuck behind queues of private motor cars.
Anyway, i'm just rambling.
In order to get public transport to work, we need to get cars out of the way.
So anything that furthers that goal sounds good to me.
I think those provisional holders that have built their livlihoods around their belief that the laws will never be enforced, are making a poor decision.

zexstream

I truly hope the Gardai enforce this law, and hopefully with the Christmas campaign coming up a lot of drivers will be stopped and asked for their licence.

It is a crazy situation and one that is a laughing stock to anyone out side of ireland.

Are some people really saying that should you not be good enough to drive on Irish roads, Fail a simple driving test designed to see how safe and confident you can be on the road you should be allowed to carry on?

And If you havent even been for a test, You should be granted permission to drive? Thats like saying to a medical student I know you havent passed your exams yet but hey what the heck carry on with the open heart surgery!


If people in this country are unhappy with the law then simply take and pass your test. If you cant pass your test then you shouldnt be on the roads.

I took and passed my test in the UK. I had 15 lessons and waited for 3 months for the test. Whilst I waited for it I carried on taking lessons. For work I caught the Bus and arranged lifts from friends and family. I lived in a rural area at the time. Why should anyone else be different? Thats Life.

Also the other empact of this new law is insurances. I do hope that anyone chancing their arm at breaking the law on Tuesday onwards realise that should they be envolved in a accident they will no longer be insured. No insurance company are going to pay out for a driver who broke the law, thus not only are you chancing your lives and others , receiving fines and points you are also liable to a civil prosecution for uninsured damages!

I hope the next steps the government take are to stop people who are living in Ireland driving on non Irish Licences. I still have my UK Licence which in theory enables me to drive at any speed and receive no points for breaking any rules of the road.

The only reason I havent changed my licence is because of the change in my allowance of what I can drive. Of course If the law said I must change I would and this is sometihng that must be brought into force for people like me and other non Irish Driving Licence holders.

oscarBravo

zexstream wrote: »

Also the other empact of this new law is insurances. I do hope that anyone chancing their arm at breaking the law on Tuesday onwards realise that should they be envolved in a accident they will no longer be insured. No insurance company are going to pay out for a driver who broke the law, thus not only are you chancing your lives and others , receiving fines and points you are also liable to a civil prosecution for uninsured damages!

This simply isn't true. Insurance is a contractual matter between the insurance company and the driver, and once you're insured, the insurance company has to pay in the event of a claim.

That said, I believe they would have a case for suing the unlicenced driver to recover the cost of the claim.

cyclopath2001

RedPlanet wrote: »

10 miles is certainly cycleable, particularly by young fit males.
But it's not practical, nor safe on our roads. .

It will be once we get rid of the unqualified drivers.

zexstream

oscarBravo wrote: »

This simply isn't true. Insurance is a contractual matter between the insurance company and the driver, and once you're insured, the insurance company has to pay in the event of a claim.

That said, I believe they would have a case for suing the unlicenced driver to recover the cost of the claim.

The reason I mentioned it is because I was basing this under UK law, maybe I am wrong but I would have considered Irish Law similar.

In UK law Insurance companies will wiggle out of any insurance claim if A) Your Vehicle is unfit to be on the road regardless of MOT/NCT. In other words you could have one bald tyre which means you are no longer insured.

Also Drivers at all times must comply with the law and Highway code. So if you are breaking the law I.E you are driving illegally on a provisional you are breaking the T&C`s of your Insurace policy so you are no longer insured.

I would have thought Irish Insurance policies the same and would point towards a driver having a accident whilst drunk. Surely No insurance company would pay up as the driver shouldnt have been driving.

I could be wrong so I wont say for sure!

IRLConor

RedPlanet wrote: »

10 miles is certainly cycleable, particularly by young fit males.
But it's not practical, nor safe on our roads.

Nor is it pleasant on a rainy day. Nor is it pleasant if it's a warm day and you've no shower facilities in work.

Even if the roads were safe enough for me to happily cycle the 6km to work there are precious few days during the year when I'd be happy to do so.

RedPlanet wrote: »

In order to get public transport to work, we need to get cars out of the way.

That's the wrong attitude to have. In order to get public transport to work we need to make the public transport a better option than taking your car. Then the cars will get out of the way.

I'm lucky that I can use the LUAS (green line) to get to work but I'm painfully aware that it's one of the few bits of public transport that works here.

I used to use Dublin Bus to school and college and it really sucked. The effect traffic had on the bus was not the worst of it by a long shot. The bus would take 20-45 mins depending on traffic whereas the times I got a lift from someone in a car it would take 15-30 mins. Add in the waiting time for the bus and it was almost twice as slow as a car even in the same traffic.

The real problems I found with Dublin Bus were:

• The route they took was idiotic (I just followed it on GMap Pedometer and it was 9km of slow, narrow roads (I mean Aughrim St FFS!) where the bus had to crawl where a more direct route would be about 7.5km of better roads).
• The buses were filthy and terribly maintained.
• Your choices of atmosphere on wet days were hot'n'steamy, cold'n'windy or if you were really "lucky" smoky'n'hashy.
• The buses came every 20 mins outside of a really narrow "rush hour" and there weren't enough buses during the rush hour either. This meant that if you were lucky you'd get to stand and if you were unlucky you'd get to see full buses just drive past your stop.

The four points above could be addressed without taking other road users into account.

RedPlanet wrote: »

Public transport is certainly available to them, they just prefer to sit in their own comfy metal box on wheels, taking up loads of road space.

They're paying a premium and yet they still do it. Why? Because the alternative just isn't worth it.

If I had a choice between 60 minutes sitting in traffic in a bus or 60 minutes sitting in traffic in a car I'd pick the car every day of the week.

RedPlanet

IRLConor wrote: »

That's the wrong attitude to have. In order to get public transport to work we need to make the public transport a better option than taking your car. Then the cars will get out of the way.

Just how do you propose to do that while our roads are stuffed with cars?

IRLConor wrote: »

I used to use Dublin Bus to school and college and it really sucked. The effect traffic had on the bus was not the worst of it by a long shot. The bus would take 20-45 mins depending on traffic whereas the times I got a lift from someone in a car it would take 15-30 mins.

Your contradicting yourself here. You claim that the worst part of riding the bus was NOT because of the traffic, but in the very next sentence you cite traffic as a complaint.

IRLConor wrote: »

They're paying a premium and yet they still do it. Why? Because the alternative just isn't worth it.

I think it's because they are lazy and too accustomed to the comfort their car provides.

IRLConor wrote: »

If I had a choice between 60 minutes sitting in traffic in a bus or 60 minutes sitting in traffic in a car I'd pick the car every day of the week.

Because your car is more comfortable than the bus.
But what about the net effect that decision makes upon the rest of society?
Forget about them, just look out for number 1 huh?

IRLConor

RedPlanet wrote: »

You're contradicting yourself here. You claim that the worst part of riding the bus was NOT because of the traffic, but in the very next sentence you cite traffic as a complaint.

No, I was demonstrating that the bus was always slower than the car DESPITE both dealing with the SAME traffic. Hence, traffic is not the worst bit. It's a constant which can be removed from the equation.

RedPlanet wrote: »

I think it's because they are lazy and too accustomed to the comfort their car provides.

They're not necessarily lazier (unless you're suggesting human-powered transport as a replacement for the cars) but they are "accustomed to the comfort their car provides". Of course they are!

What a ridiculous notion that people should make their lives harder when they have an option not to! If you had to travel to Boston, would you take a plane or a ferry?

RedPlanet wrote: »

Because your car is more comfortable than the bus.
But what about the net effect that decision makes upon the rest of society?
Forget about them, just look out for number 1 huh?

Well, personally I don't have a car, so that argument doesn't necessarily apply to me. But yes, that's exactly how people think. People (not just in Ireland) are inherently quite selfish. The trick is exploiting that selfishness to benefit everybody. It's possible to make public transport much better than driving (see New York for a fine example), and if/when that happens people will move to using it.

To re-use what I said above, if the bus on my route to school/college had taken the same amount of time (door-to-door) as a car and had been clean and well maintained and pleasant to sit in I'd never want to use a car.

lostexpectation

IRLConor wrote: »

No, I was demonstrating that the bus was always slower than the car DESPITE both dealing with the SAME traffic. Hence, traffic is not the worst bit. It's a constant which can be removed from the equation.

eh hello the bus much larger vehilce carrying 80 people or so of course it going slower, your not very public minded are you?

Boggle

redplanet wrote:

I doubt you'll get all 420,000 of ye to follow suit however.

IN an ideal world, all those who are not necessarily licenced should be banished from the roads.
But in this one....

Particularly since one of the arguments made is that those people affected have mortgages to pay.

where people need to drive to work and have become accustomed to an imperfect system, it really is not and will not be an option just to ban all of them off the road.

however i hope you're not making the argument that the standards should be reduced.

In order to get a reduction you would have to go into negative figures!

I remember when I sat my first driving test, and I was one of those people who just never bothered applying for my test until I absolutely had, the tester was an a** who had me failed before I even entered the room. Despite having driven thousands of miles per year for several years without so much as a caution or a parking ticket AND having driven the roads perfectly on the day I was failed (I know people can accuse me of being biased but I know plenty of REALLY good drivers who repeatedly failed tests and plenty of REALLY DANGEROUS drivers who passed it).

In my opinion, the reason (and a cause of our problem): The test is too simple and too short. A 20 minute spin whereby you spend 15 of it stuck in traffic, never drive on an open road and never have to demonstrate any actually relevant skills (particularly relevant when you consider most accidents occur at night and at speed - neither of which is even considered in a driving test) makes it impossible to tell a good and safe driver from a bad one.
The tester is forced to nit-pick in order to find sufficient grounds to fail anyone - add this to the incessant power trip some of these guys are on and you have a bad combination.

I don't think the media inform the public if the driver was on a provisional or full. So certainly information in this respect is lacking.

I seem to recall that they did not keep statistics of what percentage of drivers are responsible for crashes (fatal or not).

I think it's because they are lazy and too accustomed to the comfort their car provides.

Too lazy? I remember taking the bus to work in Dublin - took us at least an hour and a half extra to get to and fro work using buses. They often didn't arrive (on time or at all), were often full and never clean. The amount of times I was VERY late was disgraceful and thank god I had a understanding employer - I don't imagine every boss is so forgiving!

IRLConor

lostexpectation wrote: »

eh hello the bus much larger vehicle carrying 80 people or so of course it's going slower, you're not very public minded are you?

I don't have a car and I use public transport for my commute. How much more publicly minded do you want me to be?

The LUAS carries far more people than a bus and it doesn't suck. In most cases along the green line you'd be hard put to outpace it in a car too.

I wasn't arguing that "all public transport sucks", I was arguing that Dublin Bus sucks way more than it should and that there are several things which they could do to fix it that don't require anything other than them getting off their arses and doing it (better route planning doesn't cost much, for example).

Hobbes

zexstream wrote: »

Also Drivers at all times must comply with the law and Highway code. So if you are breaking the law I.E you are driving illegally on a provisional you are breaking the T&C`s of your Insurance policy so you are no longer insured.

One of the girls in work checked on this. If you have third party insurance then the insurance company will pay for any damages you cause. Damage to your car they said they would as well. What happens though is your premium goes so far up that you can't afford to drive.

lostexpectation

IRLConor wrote: »

I don't have a car and I use public transport for my commute. How much more publicly minded do you want me to be?

The LUAS carries far more people than a bus and it doesn't suck. In most cases along the green line you'd be hard put to outpace it in a car too.

I wasn't arguing that "all public transport sucks", I was arguing that Dublin Bus sucks way more than it should and that there are several things which they could do to fix it that don't require anything other than them getting off their arses and doing it (better route planning doesn't cost much, for example).

you can't get your head around why it would take longer in a bus then a car? you can't understand the difference between a tram and a bus?

RedPlanet

I'm curious to hear a response to this one:

IRLConor:
That's the wrong attitude to have. In order to get public transport to work we need to make the public transport a better option than taking your car. Then the cars will get out of the way.
My reply: Just how do you propose to do that while our roads are stuffed with cars?

IRLConor

RedPlanet wrote: »

Just how do you propose to do that while our roads are stuffed with cars?

The roads are stuffed with cars driven by people who would probably use public transport if it was good enough. It currently isn't good enough to tempt those people out of their cars.

My argument was that if you make it good enough, people will use it and that you don't need the roads to be empty to make our public transport much better than it currently is.

IRLConor

lostexpectation wrote: »

you can't get your head around why it would take longer in a bus than a car?

The magnitude of the difference is ridiculous. Certainly on the route that I used to go to school/college (the 37) one of the prime factors for the speed difference was idiotic route selection, not the fact that we had to stop to pick people up.

The overall door-to-door journey time can be brought down by having the buses run more frequently. I had to allow an hour for my journey simply because I might have to wait 20 minutes for a bus to turn up, even when I knew what times the buses ran at because about once a week it would just not turn up.

lostexpectation wrote: »

you can't understand the difference between a tram and a bus?

I'm well aware of the differences, apart from the obvious (wheels v rails, traffic v no/little traffic) here are two:

• Dublin Bus buses are usually filthy, Luas trams are usually clean.
• Luas trams run very frequently, only a few Dublin Bus routes run at a comparable rate.

What really bugs me though, is that I've been on public buses in plenty of other cities around the world and by and large they worked well. So it isn't that providing a good public bus service is impossible, it's that it hasn't been done right here due to a combination of underfunding, incompetence and (probably) laziness.

Nuttzz

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=54288726&postcount=29

as predicted, didnt even take 2 weeks....

djpbarry

sovtek wrote: »

Things need to be changed to accommadate people to enable them to follow the law.

A curious notion; we should do everything in our power to help people obey the law?

moe_sizlak wrote: »

while on the surface it would appear to be a very draconian measure , being ireland it will never be fully enforced

I would tend to agree – I really don’t think anything will change overnight.

wow sierra wrote: »

If everyone who is dependant on Driving on a provisional license decided to obey the law on Tuesday it would be like a National Strike.

People should not put themselves in a position whereby they need to break laws in order to get by.

wow sierra wrote: »

There are waiting times of more than 6 months in most test centres. I believe the failure rate is approximately 50%.

There must be a reason why so many people are failing? I don’t drive myself so I don’t know? You seem to be arguing that the waiting lists are too long because the test is too difficult?

wow sierra wrote: »

Someone posted that driving is a privilege not a right - give us a break. Driving is taking resposibility for your own transport instead of depending on someone else for it. In many parts of Ireland it is a necessity - unless you want to be housebound and unemployed.

Driving has nothing to do with taking responsibility for anything – it is a choice that someone makes. If it is the case that someone is living in rural Ireland with no public transport available, then they can move somewhere else or get a job closer to home. A few years back, I lived in an area with poor public transport, so I moved. I now walk to work in about 20 minutes.

IRLConor wrote: »

Nor is it pleasant on a rainy day. Nor is it pleasant if it's a warm day and you've no shower facilities in work.

Even if the roads were safe enough for me to happily cycle the 6km to work there are precious few days during the year when I'd be happy to do so.

Basically, you are not prepared to cycle. Stop making excuses.

IRLConor wrote: »

That's the wrong attitude to have. In order to get public transport to work we need to make the public transport a better option than taking your car. Then the cars will get out of the way.

I disagree. A lot of people in this country will never do without their cars. Some figures from a survey by the Dublin Transportation Office:

• 52% of people said the car was their most often used way of getting around.
• 26% or 1 in 4 people think only of their car for all trips.
• 40% of car owners don’t consider any travel options other than the car.
• 27% of all respondents said the car is preferable for short journeys of a mile or less.
• Half of all car owners (47%) take their car on these short journeys.
• 55% of short journey car users said they were unlikely to consider walking instead.
• Only 3% of these short journey car users said they were very likely to consider walking for short journeys of a mile or less, instead of using the car.

IRLConor wrote: »

The route they took was idiotic

It’s public transport – it has to serve everyone, not just you.

IRLConor wrote: »

The buses were filthy and terribly maintained.

That is simply not true – most buses I take in Dublin are in pretty good condition, certainly as good as the Luas anyway.

IRLConor wrote: »

there weren't enough buses during the rush hour either.

It is true that not enough buses are timetabled. However, rather than owing to poor management, this is mainly due to the fact there are too few drivers – nobody wants to drive buses anymore.

IRLConor wrote: »

They're paying a premium and yet they still do it. Why? Because the alternative just isn't worth it.

Again, I would disagree. I lived in Killester a couple of years ago and every morning I was amazed at the number of cars on the Howth Road heading into town. Public transport in the area was pretty good; there were several bus routes as well as the DART. The DART took about 10 minutes to get into town, whereas a car would take about 30 (depending on traffic) and yet people still opted to drive – baffling!

IRLConor wrote: »

To re-use what I said above, if the bus on my route to school/college had taken the same amount of time (door-to-door) as a car and had been clean and well maintained and pleasant to sit in I'd never want to use a car.

But that does not apply to everyone.

IRLConor wrote: »

I was arguing that Dublin Bus sucks way more than it should and that there are several things which they could do to fix it that don't require anything other than them getting off their arses and doing it (better route planning doesn't cost much, for example).

I’ve already pointed out that it is not that simple.

IRLConor wrote: »

The roads are stuffed with cars driven by people who would probably use public transport if it was good enough. It currently isn't good enough to tempt those people out of their cars.

My argument was that if you make it good enough, people will use it and that you don't need the roads to be empty to make our public transport much better than it currently is.

No, I do not think that is at all true.

IRLConor wrote: »

The overall door-to-door journey time can be brought down by having the buses run more frequently.

Difficult to achieve at the moment.

IRLConor wrote: »

Dublin Bus buses are usually filthy, Luas trams are usually clean.

Nonsense.

IRLConor wrote: »

What really bugs me though, is that I've been on public buses in plenty of other cities around the world and by and large they worked well.

Like where? I’ve been on buses in New York, Brussels and London and they all get stuck in traffic too!

IRLConor wrote: »

So it isn't that providing a good public bus service is impossible, it's that it hasn't been done right here due to a combination of underfunding, incompetence and (probably) laziness.

On the part of the government, yes. Huge sums of money are being pumped into roads when it should be going into public transport.

Eire 4Ever

wow sierra wrote: »

If everyone who is dependant on Driving on a provisional license decided to obey the law on Tuesday it would be like a National Strike. It would be wonderful to see the chaos which would insue if all those people didn't turn up for work.

There are waiting times of more than 6 months in most test centres. I believe the failure rate is approximately 50%.

There is NO EVIDENCE that an 18year old with a full license is less likely to drink and drive/speed/play chicken/road race etc etc etc than one with a provisional. There is no evidence that road accidents are caused by learner drivers - they are more likely to be caused by overconfident drivers.

There is NO PUBLIC TRANSPORT in most of Rural Ireland. I don't mean poor, I don't mean inadequate, I mean NONE. Most people are driving distances of more than 10 miles to work, many are driving 20 or 30 miles. Would ye propose that they walk/cycle/use a horse and cart?????

A huge percentage of the people driving on provisional licenses are in their 30s 40s etc - not 18 year olds.

Someone posted that driving is a privilege not a right - give us a break. Driving is taking resposibility for your own transport instead of depending on someone else for it. In many parts of Ireland it is a necessity - unless you want to be housebound and unemployed.

well said