Newslink August 2023

Area News
50 years on, why do we still hesitate to
help the public improve their driving?
Andrew
Burgess
MSA GB East Coast
Is it time we make a serious attempt to
improve the standard of driving in the United
Kingdom? After being in the business for over
50 years I feel we still see no positive
improvements in the overall standard among
the public.
My involvement in the training industry has
now been over 50 years and has covered
many aspects of training, from car to vans
and buses.
I qualified in 1969 as an ADI and at the time
we were talking about driver improvement
then – and it seems to me we still doing it
now.
My work is now in the classroom,
delivering on-line awareness courses. As
with many of my colleagues doing the same
thing, I find that the majority of clients at the
end of the courses learn so much that they
feel that training would be beneficial to all
drivers, possibly at the time of the renewal of
their driving licences.
Is this the way we should be going to
improve the standard of driving and help to
reduce the number of fatalities on the UK
roads? I am quite sure that there are many
ADls out there with the same option as me.
It might not be popular among the public
but consider, when I first started training,
seat belts had just come in. Everyone
objected to them, and when they were made
mandatory there was a huge push-back
against their use. Time proved the people
who supported them to be right as they have
saved countless lives.
Drink driving is making an unwelcome
return, and it now appears that drug taking is
a bigger problem than it was before.
Education must be the way forward, as time
has proved over and over again.
The thought of taking your driving test
again would spread fear and dread into many
people’s lives, but there is a better way
forward that achieves the improvements in a
way that would be welcomed. Assessment
– by a professional driver trainer – is not a
test; take away the threat of losing your
licence and put in its place education, if only
by means of the Offender Education
programme.
A programme of assessment would give us
the opportunity for further driving training
improvements and improve the quality of the
driving standard on the roads today. It would
also give instructors the chance to earn more
money and in turn pay more tax to the
Government. Win-win!
We know only too well many drivers don’t
read the Highway Code as it is, so some kind
of mandatory education programme would
be a way of getting any new rules over to
drivers and bring the importance of road
safety back to those who haven’t taken any
notice of the changes that have taken place.
Let’s have a look at the facts. 31st Jan 1983
seat belts became compulsory for all front
seat passengers. The Road Safety Act 1967
made it an offence to drive a vehicle with a
blood alcohol concentration over 80mg of per
100ml of blood. That limit remains in place
today.
Drugs, now there’s a problem? Not just
illegal drugs but prescription drugs.
We need to ask the question about driver
training. The number of cars on our roads has
‘‘
We know only too well many
drivers don’t read the Highway
Code as it is, so some kind of
mandatory education programme
would be a way of getting any
new rules over to drivers and
bring the importance of road
safety to many
increased since 1969 when I began driver
training, from approximately 7.7 million cars
on the road then, to today’s approx 32 million.
Given that increase, surely we should bring
in more rules to govern standards and
improve driving?
Councils told to clean up the pavement
Councils are being urged to cut the clutter on their pavements, to
allow pedestrians to walk and wheel more easily and for those on the
road to be able to see more clearly who might be about to cross.
The plea was made by Living Streets, to mark its Cut the Clutter
week (July 10-16).
The walking charity wants councils to ban all A-board advertising
on the pavement, remove unused phone boxes, and cut back hedges
that encroach on pavements, among other measures to ‘cut the
clutter on Britain’s pavements’.
With a rise in electric vehicles, e-scooters and e-bikes, the charity
also wants a commitment from councils that charging points and
cycle storage will be placed on the carriageway and not on the
pavements, unless there is at least 1.5 metres clearance left for
people walking and wheeling.
36 NEWSLINK n AUGUST 2023