CHAPTERS.

23. ATTITUDE.

'THE REASON A 'DUFFER' REMAINS A 'DUFFER' IS BECAUSE HE THINKS  HE WILL NEVER HAVE TO SIT AN EXAMINATION'.

            'Un-due hesitancy' could well be applied at 'give way' signs. However, any examiner should be able to recognise talent compared with the 'stop-go' novice who might pass the 'test' first time but, thereafter, achieve little.

    Stories are heard of drivers learning to driver only during the hours of darkness! Stories about people spending thousands of pounds on lessons and repeatedly failing the test. The object is driving competently ensuring that any test will be passed without question. 

    Teachers must be competent in 'professional' coaching but never, ever must it be compulsory teaching. A novice driver has to ride with a competent driver in order to appreciate good driving but, because it is not possible, perhaps 1288 is the nearest alternative. At least it brings to all drivers' attention details about which they are not familiar. Nevertheless, instead of teaching the intricacies of driving correctly, on July 1st 1996 a theory test was introduced costing £15 which, no doubt, only created revenue and little else.

    If road craft teaching commences at school it must be accompanied by discipline, a word out of favour as time passes but discipline is essential behind the wheel of a car. There is every chance that a youth will experience his first crash soon after passing the driving-test. 'Freedom of expression' at school under-mines what driver's duties demand.

    An agency, with a contract worth in excess of £70 millions, testing people, is big business; does it achieve its objectives? Statistics reveal that consistently drivers, between the age of seventeen and twenty-four cause twenty-five per cent of all crashes.

    Repetitively, people demand that the 'government' must do something when they, themselves, are un-able to devise a solution beyond their thinking. Never should the government be involved in anything beyond its capacity. Market forces dictate the rise and fall of any activity.

    'Accept traffic today in the knowledge that it will get worse tomorrow'