dcbwhaley wrote:
The RoSPA objection is that when children learn the mechanics of driving in a safe, traffic free environment they learn little about road safety and traffic awareness. Then when, at 17, they go on the road they will be dangerously over confident. RoSPA also think that these early trained drivers will pass their test after three or four lessons and without ever properly learning traffic awareness.
There might be some merit in their first argument - letting such drivers onto the public highway unsupervised would be disastrous - it falls down on the second.
I admit this is far from a perfect analogy, but it's the best I've got so far ...
Infants first learn to walk - and perhaps even run - in the closed course called home, under the loving supervision of their parents, if not at least loved family and friends.
What if, instead, kids had to wait to learn to walk until the age of 16 or so?
Further, imagine if every time someone jumped over an obstacle instead of walking around it, the privileged few who were trained by the state in Parkour (thus the only people licensed to use such maneuvers) chased him down and fined him for 'reckless acrobatics'?
Every time someone ran too fast, their picture would be taken, and they'd receive a NIP a fortnight later ... investigations would spring up every time some one bumped into someone else ...
We learn to walk long before we learn not to walk into people. We learn and go over basic motor skills ad infinitum before we learn to use them responsibly.
It need not be exactly so for driving, but ...
How many accidents could be avoided with 'superior motor skills'?
How many times have we stated that every time a so-called 'intelligent driver aid' must come to the rescue (ABS, Traction Control, Stability Control, Roll Control, Emergency Brake Assist, Lane Departure Prevention, Distance-Based Cruise Control with Emergency Stop), something has gone horribly wrong?
Where is that topic about how young drivers were unable to harmlessly negotiate a slalom in an 'old car' when I need it?
And who is the imbecile implying that we spend extra time teaching the finer points of motor vehicle operation
to the exclusion of road safety and traffic awareness? I, for one, want more driver education, training,
and testing - not more of one for less of the others, and certainly not less of all three.