Safe Speed Forums

500 hours!!!!!

I passed after around 30 hours, 18 months ago and am yet to crash. Go figure.

500 hours x average driving lesson cost of £20 per hour = £10,000.

Basically it is a tax on the poor who won't be able to afford to drive anymore, and thus their career opportunities will diminish along with standards of living. Does anyone have any info on KSI rates in the first year of driving, comparing 17 and 18 year olds?

Also, how can you TELL someone how long it will take them to learn to drive. There is nothing on this earth that people grasp at the same speed as each other. Why must the age be increased along with the test difficulty?

Five hundred hours? Five hundred hours?!?!?!

The claim of 100 hours is steep. I had 6 driving lessons before I passed my test. With a few hours of supervised driving with my father I maybe had 30 hours, absolute tops!

With a minimum 45 hours the CAA will grant someone over the age of 17 a private pilot's licence, to take an aircraft into the skies above us, all on their own.

With far less than 500 hours the RAF will send young men to war, expecting exemplary standards of machine control and airmanship.

From which bureaucrat's cavernous posterior were these 100/500 hour figures pulled?

Perhaps more importantly, where is the quantitative research figures that show 1000 lives and 7000 casualties will be saved by these measures? Presumably these are the figures for those killed/injured by drivers in their first year after passing the test, will delaying this by a year (when the frontal lobe is not fully developed until 25) make any difference at all, bar having 18-year-olds with one year's less driving experience?

I am all for higher and stricter standards of education, and more stringent (and preferably ongoing) assessment, but this smacks of further knee-jerk, ill-thought-out, reactionary policy.

_________________
All views expressed are personal.

Many test centers do not have a duel carriageway within the distance reachable on the test, let alone a motorway.
(cowes test center, drive to ferry, sit on ferry 1 hour, drive to motorway,1hour, back on ferry, 1 hour )

Reversing round a corner is perfectly safe something I had to do all the time in my previous live as a telephone engineer on just wing mirrors. All ways major rd to minor rd.

_________________
Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

True, but therein lies a problem. Just because the test centre is not near a motorway/dual carriageway does not mean the driver will not use one, and when they do - they will be unskilled and unprepared.

Touché on the second point! I maintain it's a bizarre thing to incluce, let alone put so much weight on it - most people will rarely, if ever, need to do the manouver, so it's odd that it's given the same weight as an emergency stop, parallell parking and 3 point turns.

Profanity not quoted...

Personally, I regularly reverse round corners!

_________________
Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

Like many other people I live on a cul-de-sac where in effect I have to reverse my car round a corner to get it out of the road again.

I have to say I find mmltonge's comment surprising - has he never taken a wrong turning or found himself on a dead-end road? Except on very quiet and fairly wide residential streets, reversing around a corner is a far better way of reversing the direction of the vehicle than doing a 3-point turn. In fact I'm struggling to think of when I last did a 3-point turn.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

How do you reverse out of a drive? or out of a parking space?
Is that not reversing round a corner?

_________________
Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

guess it's in the definition, i would consider out of a drive, reversing out of a drive. Reversing round a corner in the test (for me, and those I know) was reversing from one side street into another, not at a dead end, but one where you could have much easier turned in the correct way in the first place...

You're all making me revise my opinion to: the way in which it is taught (from one street to another, with no real reason to not turn in forwards) is wrong then, and needs to be applied better to a more likely scenario.

As for 3 pointers - that's my personally preferred option if I've gone wrong, certainly not reversing into another road where you can't see what's coming until it might be too late.

Yeah but you never do it in the same fashion as on a test. Which is effectively reversing round and doing a strange little park thing near the curb.

going back to the original point

when I learnt to drive we did a weeks course and took the test
40 hours including the test. If you failed you got a few extra days. Very few people needed extra days.

If people need 500 hours they shouldnt be driving or they are being taught wrong!

_________________
Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

To put this into perspective, the average time spent, per UK resident, per year, driving a car or motorcycle, in 2005 is 152 hours per year.
I don't know how that breaks down per driver, however, given that >70% of those over 17 own full licences, then I would guesstimate that the average time spent driving, per driver, is ~300 hours per year.



I also found this:

Yet the national fatality rate has stopped falling? How can this possibly add up with the proposed policy?

It is a good way of showing control of the vehicle, the front becomes the back.... http://www.2pass.co.uk/reverse.htm

As for the emergency stop, "three point turn", reversing around a corner..

they are not all done on the test, some are tested on one or two, some on others.. they decide on the day who gets to do stops and turns etc...

I had 2 hours of instruction...and I didn't have to do the hazard perception test either....but I had some 30 years on m/cycles and a B1 licence....

The interesting thing about the bit on reversing ( http://www.2pass.co.uk/reverse.htm ) - is that it is written for a car driver . I did ask my daughter's instructor a few years ago if it could be done on mirrors and she did not think so . I gave up looking through car rear windows years ago - car or van , I use the mirrors- lot easier and more control.

The bit about reversing a van brings back a comment from one van instructor -never reverse if you can get back there by going forward.

Looking at the idea of motorway driving - I could have sat my test on any class of road if it had been included , but imagine my sister's problem - the only road locally was single track (with passing places ) -
The ideal companion on a trip in summer was an apprentice with licence -a lot of the tourists had forgotten how to .

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

This is my point though. Some people will be tested on how to reverse around a corner (which, im sorry, is not the same as reversing out a driveway) instead of something which is much more useful like an emergency stop or parallel parking. It shouldn't carry the same weight at all imo

Ach.. it about demonstrating a "handling skill". It a test .. so you have to cover whole syllabus - but like every test - it should have "element of test" und not expectation of what exactly being tested as routine which can be learned to Pavlov Dog requirement.

It good that the test or training has to include training of a lot more skills though.

This new test.. it EU. We follow Brussels or rather Germany und France ...but UK go too far with 500 hours of formal learning here.

Compare this with say.. GCSE or A2 course or degree course even. They not in classroom for that length of time for many of these exams.



But those EU country's still have higher ratio of KSI amongst the young - because with best will in worlde.. some kids will seek a thrill .. a tragic one.. Or believe that drinking too much ist the "macho thing to do". Not easy to steer kids onto the right course either.

Perhaps we should be focussing more on developing the right attitude und road sense long before age 17 . Und being harder on developing "yobbiness" - nailing it before it become "habitual".

_________________
Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

Oh yes! Plagued with 17 year olds driving Lambos around here we are!

Clarkson put it very concisely in his page in Saturdays Sun - ( wording is mine from memory)raising the age is not the problem -the problem is lack of experience - raise it to 25 and we'll see more 25 year olds having accidents .

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

OK so we increase the demand for driving instructors x5. Surely this will place a massive strain on the current instructors. Additionally there will be 5x as many learner drivers on the road. And I predict an even greater incentive for young drivers not to bother with passing the test and risk driving without a license. Given the increasing focus on ANPR, driving mum and dads car will go unnoticed.

We may also see people going on learner driver holidays to places like Poland etc. where it is common to pay for the license

We may also see an underground of driving instructors falsely certifying log books in exchange for cash.

Lastly we'll see a massive increase in the number of 125 riding learner riders aged 17. Which has advanatages and disadvantages.

Proposed questions to be raised by any consultation response:

- With the number of instructor hours per student set to rise between 3 and 5 times, has any analysis been performed on the supply and demand of driving instructor and availability?

- What policing initiatives will be put in place to verify that instructors are not falsely certifying log books in exchange for cash? Will the DSA perform spot checks?

- Has any assessment been performed on the likely switch to riding learner legal motorbikes at 17 and the potential increase in vulnerable road user exposure?

- What analysis of young drivers in employment (full/PT) has been performed to assess the impact of 17 year olds who need to drive for work.

- With the cost for learning to drive set to increase dramatically, has any assessment been performed on the potential increase of unlicensed young drivers who simply don't bother to learn to drive