Uk driving test 2015 how to#
Uk driving test 2015 drivers#
Uk driving test 2015 registration#

Uk driving test 2015 drivers#

The nature of “the test”Īfter a period of instruction, learner drivers are required to drive for about half an hour showing knowledge of the Highway Code and the ability to carry out basic manoeuvres. Benefits are not only inadequate in terms of screening out incompetent drivers or providing proper training, but are absorbed by encouraging feelings of pride and supposed fulfilment of responsibility. In the event, driving tests became compulsory for new licence holders from June 1935. Instead the RAC complained that it would be wrong to demand a test for a driving licence when one was not required for a dog licence. The dangers of the driving test – so accurately perceived by Churchill were not (and are still not) appreciated. If they could drive with care and respect for other road users, why couldn’t other motorists? Like other approaches skirting the fundamental problems of road danger, the campaign was always going to have limited or even negative results. Part of a humble and placid approach, it was typified by those campaigners who tried to achieve their ends, like cycling and pedestrian safety campaigners today, by friendly persuasion using their own driving behaviour as an example. Private motoring was exclusively a middle- and upper-class pursuit, cycling a predominantly working class one but the issue was rarely seen as one of class politics) The campaign for “the test” was, then, a request for motorists to become a little more responsible, rather than a serious attempt at control. The call for a 30 mph speed limit, for example, has to be seen in the context of poor and unreliable braking capacity, less reliable road surfaces and road layouts far more difficult to negotiate than now. Despite the fact that a minority of road users had completely transformed the road environment in less than two decades, their demands were moderate, to say the least. There was no basic opposition to mass motoring as such from the campaigners. Yet there was a good deal of humility in the approach of the campaigners, whether in organisations such as the Pedestrians’ Association for Road Safety or leader writers reflecting public horror at a road toll which had reached an all-time high in 1934, the year before the introduction of “the test”. As one account of this battle, which is not unsympathetic to the motorists’ cause, states: “ What they had to overcome in order to get the necessary legislation on the statute books was the determined, articulate and well-financed opposition of the powerful car lobby.” Considering the road and vehicle conditions of the 1930s, the campaigners’ case for a test seems irrefutable, and the opposition to it an example of how ruthless the motorists’ lobby could be.

Uk driving test 2015 registration#

As early as 1903, debate in Parliament and elsewhere had mentioned the need for a means of testing people before they could be entrusted with a motorcar.’° Along with associated demands from a public increasingly concerned about a rising total of road deaths for measures such as speed limits, compulsory insurance, law enforcement, licensing and the registration and numbering of vehicles, its introduction was fought with tenacity by the motoring organisations. The driving test which British motorists must pass in order to possess a valid driving licence was brought in only after prolonged campaigning, against bitter opposition. Congratulatory cards: What is “the great achievement”? From: “Death on the Streets: cars and the mythology of road safety” Safety and “the test”

Below I enclose what I wrote about “the test” in 1992 (fully referenced version here) – 111, and then I see whether anything has changed since then. Let’s see how the compulsory driving test for motorists is in many ways part of the problem of danger on the roads.

Saying this is rather taboo, but I think that this taboo needs to be broken. Whatever benefits it may have are thus diminished, and I doubt whether it has a significant – or indeed perhaps any – overall function as a means of controlling road danger.

I argue that, however much it has been modified or tweaked, the role of the “test” is actually to boost the sense of entitlement of drivers – encouraging the sense of “undue proficiency” that Churchill perceptively noticed. There will be calls for a ”graduated driving test” and possibly even the argument that drivers should retake “the test”. Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, responding to a 1911 TUC delegation demanding the introduction of a driving test.Īs we approach the 80 th anniversary of the compulsory driving test in the UK, there will be some discussion of how there could be modifications of the current driving test.

Uk driving test 2015 how to#

Churchill in 1911 (Photo: Daily Mail) “Few accidents arise… from ignorance of how to drive, and a much more frequent cause of disaster is undue proficiency leading to excessive adventure”.