DRIVERS’ REGULATIONS

Hawera Star, Volume L, 29 November 1930, Page 12

DRIVERS’ REGULATIONS

PROPOSED AMENDMENTS. WIDER TEST PROVIDED. The draft motor drivers’ regulations contain nothing of a very revolutionary nature, and so far as the actual driving test is concerned there will be little difference from the one already m general use. In addition to the practical test, however, the applicant will be required to pass an oral examingation on general driving knowledge, signals, and rules of the road. In the past applicants have been instructed on these points. Holders of licenses mav obtain a renewal without test. One provision that may cause some difference of opinion is the stipulation that hearing and eyesight tests be passed. The applicant may obtain a certificate from a doctor, if not, the inspector will make the test, which, however, does not seem to be unduly severe. The age limit is still 15 years for a private vehicle, and it lias risen from 18 to 21 years for a passenger vehicle, and to 18 years for a trade motor of over 30cwt unladen weight. No local authority may issue a license to a person residing in an adjoining local body district, it having happened in the past that applicants who have been refused a license have gone to the next one and been granted a license.

Commenting on these, “Autos” in the “Evening Post” states: “Many people seem inclined to welcome with open hands, also, the provision of stricter tests for the licensing of drivers, quite overlooking that where motor transport is most developed very little store is set on these socalled tests, than in many parts of America, for instance, there is no test at all, and that England, despite the urging that has taken place from some quarters, has always fought shy of

“No great exception can be taken to the provision of means to ensure physical fitness to drive, but the fiti\pss required is mainly one of eyesight and there are people more blind in their sense of motordom and less temperamentally fitted to drive than hundreds of people whose eyesight is by no' means the :best, but whose road •sense and natural capacity to' handle a vehicle is high. Driving tests at i present are to some extent a matter of personal opinion as between inspector and applicant. . . ‘Autos' is not complaining of tests, but too much stress should not be placed upon them nor too . much reliance, as proof of abilitv to drive. A test, however, is a check on aoility to handle the controls, and it is not desirable that anyone should appear on the highway until this has been attained. A better method of licensing, however, would be a certificate of competency from someone licensed to teach, and, better still, a school. There is a tendency, however, on the part of people who have learned to drive to magnify the danger created by those going through the process, and their first appearance as operators on the road, touch folk should remember that they were no particular dancer at this stage themselves, and that in reality it was not till long after that stage they had any title to consider themselves good drivers, supposing, of course, they are good drivers now. •‘Driving- tests mean little; they are merely a kind of permission to begin to drive, for it takes years on the road before ordinary people acquire real competency as drivers. The dangerous stage is not that of one’s novitiate, but a period following when confidence has been acquired, yet the driver is still ignorant of the many traps that await him. Accidents readily occur at this stage of driving experience. . . The real menace is the driver competent to be at the Wheel, but temporarily unfitted by reason of indulgence in beverages best left, alone when in charge of a car. Sleepiness ils another ibig factor in roacl accidents, and inattention, quite common among experienced drivers, a third. Where the novice fails is not in want of alertness, but in not haying acquired the faculty of taking in everything at once; he is apt to have his attention caught and held too much by some one thing. The experience of ‘Autos' round about town and elsewhere is that emergencies are caused not so much by novices, but by those confident people who dash about, in and out, fully persuaded that their abilitv to handle the vehicle will keep them safe, whereas all the time it is the other man’s care and forbearance tliat makes it possible for them to continue without accident. It takes onlv two such coming together in fill a spa e in the next issue of the newspaper, and unfortunately too often only the one is needed and the innocent sufler. . . “There is another point about the proposed changes in the regulations. Much is being made of the acquiring of a. license to drive in some district after a refusal in another. . . If a driving test is to be compulsory and if the conditions are to be similaras is proposed, and, as they must be if the system is to have a national va l ue _it cannot matter where the license is obtained, so why worry about the matter? If there is to be a, test the test will he general and locality cannot matter. Furthermore, rf tests are to be imposed, why should existing license holders escape? The pronortion of them who have passed a genuine driving test must be vary small ”