Should Drivers Be Required to Undergo a Biennial test

[Jerry_Atrick]

..

 

Almost all of those accidents were avoidable - both by the idiot, and the "victims" iif they were paying more attention..

[Bruce Tuncks]

My wife says that you would just get a f-wit as an examiner. She reckons an IQ test before you get a license would be better.

I agree with her. A few months ago, I was driving home and, on a main road, coming towards me was a car completely on the wrong side!

It was being driven by a negro lady and that explained to me how she got her license...  would it be racist to fail her? you bet.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I once read that 90% if road fatalities are caused by the lowest IQ 10% of drivers. My personal experience agrees with this. That sure is a politically incorrect thing to say huh.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Bruce Tuncks

[old man emu]

In NSW the population is 8.1 million. Of that number about one million are below driver age. Another, very roughly half a million are maybe too old to continue to drive. Then there are those in between those ages who are unable to drive due to mental or physical disabilities. Add to the total those who simply don't seek or need a licence. I think I've whittled the numbers down pretty generously, but let's say that there are 5 million licenced drivers in NSW. That means 2.5 million driver re-tests per annum. If 30 minutes was allocated for the whole process, you can see that there are not enough hours in a year to implement such a policy. Further reducing the ability to re-test is the number of examiners needed to make it practicable.

 

Victoria and Queensland have similar numbers of residents, and the other State/Territories between an eighth and a quarter of NSW. Still big numbers but teh same number of hours.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I don't agree with your numbers OME. They seem to assume that only one candidate can be tested at a time.

How about the test was done on a driving simulator? You could have emergencies ( simulated) and the machine could give you a score. There could be many such machines in a testing place and of course several testing places.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I would accept a failure at such a test to give up driving from old age much more than some age-related rule.

[nomadpete]

Artificial Intelligence to the rescue!

[octave]

Just skim some statistics, I am wondering if the biggest contributor to car accidents is not controlling the car or perhaps even knowledge of road rules but rather behavioral and decision making skills.   This is a harder skill to test for.    During a driving test people are unlikely to attempt reckless overtaking or text etc,      

[spacesailor]

BI annual! .

Much better than our oldies "ANNUAL" MEDICAL AND TEST.

Drive to be test , sneeze on test . Then WALK home having failed. 

Don,t forget that ' towtruck ' cost to get your car home as well !.

How long before you can do that test again ? Then a taxi each way ! Win Or loose.

Every year starting 2023. Then forever after.

spacesailor

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

You are quite right octave, but the people with behavioral problems etc are highly correlated with IQ.

But not all...  a neighbor had a dumb son, in many ways a nice kid. He had 3 bad crashes in his first few years of driving, and he put these down to bad luck.

I reckon he was lucky to be alive and a good illustration of my point. I have many more examples, one with large numbers and years of time.

With the politically correct lot around, there is no way we will ever know if it would work in practice.  IQ tests are rarely done these days and this is a big victory to some.

This is why a simulator should be tried.

[spacesailor]

AND those that for whatever reasons !,

Cannot fathom that Bureaucratic test (  manipulated to rid Certain groups ) of their pleasure .

BAD TEACHERS !  Straight out of the military. To teach vulnerable children is just one reason.

A " pedagogy" of forcing "  Phonetics " to the detriment of ' spelling ' correctly .

Pigheaded arrogant examiners. Who think having lunch & chatting ladies is more important then the person going 

' unwatched ' in circles on their test.

I just DON,T fit your mold , 

1956 to 2022 with NO  major crashes by me !. 

WHY will l be such a BAD DRIVER next year ?.

spacesailor

 

 

[octave]

Just looking through the stats, it is quite interesting to see how much improvement there has been in road fatalities.  The worst decade appears to be the 70s with 1970 being the highest fatality rate (30.4 per 100 000) compared to 2018 (4.6 per 100 000).

 

List of motor vehicle deaths in Australia by year

 

In terms demographics, young men are over represented.  It seems to be related to young males and risk taking behavior.

 

Road Trauma And Young Drivers – Does Gender Make A Difference?

 

 

 

 

   

[onetrack]

IMO, the advance of technology to self-driving cars (which will be more rapid as more EV vehicles are produced) will eventually reduce road crashes to a fraction of what it is today. 

 

In the meantimes, nothing will stop the idiots from killing themselves on a regular basis. Single vehicle crashes on straight stretches of road shows our driving training is still seriously deficient.

[Old Koreelah]

4 hours ago, nomadpete said:

Artificial Intelligence to the rescue!

A mandatory driving test on an AI simulator could be a cost-effective way of screening out those drivers who need a  refresher- or removing from our roads.

[spacesailor]

BUT an  AGE discriminate test !.

HOW About doing one at 19, when you,ve mastered EVERYTHING ?.

spacesailor

[Yenn]

The driveability of modern cars is way better than those of say the 50s and 60s. The roads are way better than they were even 5 years ago and still we have too many accidents. It would not matter how often drivers were re tested, they would be on their best behaviour during the test. The real reason we have so many accidents is that drivers either make the wrong decision or even more often don't make a decision.

I always find it interesting to watch the decision making process of other drivers. How often have you seen the driver that wants to overtake, but cannot come to a decision as to wether or not it is safe?

I reckon if we had to go back to the days before synchromesh or automatic gearboxes and sharing the roads with slow moving trucks, we would probably have less accidents, because drivers would have to stay awake and make decisions more often.

[octave]

There may be some merit in another test a year or 2 after attaining a licence and for elderly drivers.  I do wonder though if it would do much good.  Looking at a list of the leading causes of crashes the most common factors are fatigue, speeding, intoxication and distraction/inattention.     I suspect that these causes would not show up in a test.  I would imagine that very few drivers would speed during a test and they certainly would not text or answer their phone.   Most accidents in younger drivers seem to have behavioral causes.  In older drivers perhaps there are more factors such as eyesight etc.

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, octave said:

Looking at a list of the leading causes of crashes the most common factors are fatigue, speeding, intoxication and distraction/inattention.   

Those factors deal with one third of the three inputs to a collision, the other to being the vehicle and the road. Since perhaps Ralph Nader's  1965 "Unsafe at any speed" our motor vehicles have become better able to provide passive protection to their occupants. That has reduced fatalities and maybe serious injury, but I think the reduction in numbers of fatalities has shifted into the serious injuries numbers. On thing I would like to see is a ban on dark coloured cars. Those colours make the car blend into the background of the road surface, especially in low light situations around dusk and heavily overcast skies. 

 

Likewise, we have more divided roads where opposing traffic is successfully separated, thus reducing head-on collisions. In suburban areas we have the proliferation of roundabouts which slow traffic. I don't think that they all enhance traffic flow.

 

The problem is that politicians, who are the mob who have to answer for spending on road safety, fail to properly analyse the locations of fatal and serious injury collisions. As a result, we get an emphasis on speed limit enforcement in the most ridiculous places whose selection can't be conceivably based on collision data. 

 

That leaves the third input into collisions - the human. Do you know of anyway who is regularly successful in herding cats? 

 

 

[willedoo]

A few years back, I read that statistically, yellow cars were the least number involved in head on collisions. The most frequent were the camo like colours - green, grey, and dark colours that blended into the background.

[Old Koreelah]

41 minutes ago, old man emu said:

…I would like to see is a ban on dark coloured cars. Those colours make the car blend into the background of the road surface, especially in low light situations around dusk and heavily overcast skies. 

I’ll vote for that!

41 minutes ago, old man emu said:

The problem is that politicians, who are the mob who have to answer for spending on road safety, fail to properly analyse the locations of fatal and serious injury collisions. 
 

I have kept a map of callouts attended by our VRA rescue squad over forty years. Other than a slight concentration at major road junctions, there is no pattern to the road accidents: they are randomly scattered along the main roads.
I’d blame most on fatigue or inattention, rather than road design. 

[Jerry_Atrick]

1 hour ago, old man emu said:

The problem is that politicians, who are the mob who have to answer for spending on road safety, fail to properly analyse the locations of fatal and serious injury collisions. As a result, we get an emphasis on speed limit enforcement in the most ridiculous places whose selection can't be conceivably based on collision data. 

Maybe the data they base it on is the most likely location they'll collect the most revenue? Gee, I am an old cynic!

 

On the numbers, I have to admit, I didn't think of the logistics of a biennial  (of what is sort of tongue in cheek), but, yes, with 20 odd million drivers in Aus, bi-ennial would be tough - but that doesn't mean somethign shouldn't be done. Only a tiny minority of the accidents were unavoidable, and while there were complete idiots entering into flowing traffic when they shouldn't, a fair share of those "not at fault" were somewhat in deference to thse potential situations and continued one regardless - is it an unwarranted belief that everything will work OK and nothing could possibly happen to them? My old instructor said something that was not in the syllabus - make sure you can stop in the distance you can see [the whole thing].

 

Yes, I take it people will be on their best behaviour in a test, but with the advent of AI, advanced psychological understanding, and new technologies, something should be done. The very existence of all the dash cam footage from that one yootoob channel would also be used for education.. and those that are in accidents where the footage is available, maybe should be asked to "please explain".

 

I agree, when autonomous driving hits critical mass, then safety should shoot through the roof, but until then (and let's assume it will be quite a few years away, still), I think I will get an IR and stick to flying,

 

[old man emu]

4 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

make sure you can stop in the distance you can see

A restatement of "Look before you leap".

 

Unfortunately, very few, if any, student drivers are put through a skid-to-stop demonstration. When I was doing my driving course for Police driver certification one of the first demonstrations was one of these using a double shot location marker. Basically it was two .22 breeches loaded with Ramset cartridges and having a stick of chalk as the "bullet". Each was fired using a solenoid. The student was told to drive along the circuit at a steady speed. The instructor fired the, first round and the second round was fired when the brake light circuit was energised - the brake light came on. On the first "bang" , the student stomped on the brake pedal as quickly as possible and kept the brakes locked until the vehicle stopped.

 

This showed the student a few things

1.  Distance travelled during the Reaction/Activation time.

2. Distance to skid to a stop from a known speed on that type of surface.

3.  Off-line drift due to the gravitational pull resulting from the camber of the road surface.

 

Later, as an accident reconstructionist, I used the same technique to gather teh data that allowed me to calculate the Coefficient of Friction between the sliding tyre and the road surface. I used that C of F to calculate pre and post- impact speeds.

[Bruce Tuncks]

That's exactly my point OME. What do you do with people unable to understand that stuff? Not just unwilling, but unable?

Well I for one would not license them, but they sure do get licenses from our politically correct lot.

I say that denying them licenses is justified by the terrible carnage that the dumb cause on the roads. I read how "inattention" is a big reason for accidents, but that would correlate strongly with IQ.

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

And Jerry, what would you do with those unable to understand reaction times and stopping distances?

[Jerry_Atrick]

We have to remember that a licence to drive is a privilege - not a right. Much the same as a PPL or RPL. If someone is not up to the task, then, well, as you say,

 

17 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Well I for one would not license them,

 

I think you and I agree..