Driver's Licences (was: Quotas(little or no Audi Content))

[Ron Mruss <rmruss@pangea.ca>]

I'm behind in my reading, so this post is about a week late, but I wholeheartedly agree with John about the ease with which people can secure a driver's licence.  I don't know what's involved with the driving tests in the various places other listers live, but here in Manitoba, the road test consists of twenty or so minutes of city driving, plus some parallel parking.  I have no idea how this ensures that you're able to drive on the highway, but that's all there is to it.  This might explain why there are so many terrible drivers around, loafing in the left lane on the highway, and either looking baffled or getting angry if you have the NERVE to flash your brights in their rear-view mirror to tell them to get into the right lane.

Our insurance here is through a government-run insurance agency (a model of efficiency, of course), which seems to keep raising the cost of insurance, and spending large sums of money on TV or billboard ads to tell us that "Speed Kills", when anyone with a brain knows that the vast majority of accidents are caused by poor drivers who have no idea how to drive properly and no interest in learning.  You'd think that if their goal was to make the roads safer they would invest some money on better driver training and a longer and more difficult road test, but that will never happen.  Nor will periodic re-testing, which I think would go a long way toward getting bad drivers off the road, because, let's face it, some people just should not be driving.

just my .02

Jeff Mruss