The Real Driver’s Test

Why do they bother handing out driver’s licenses? Well, because they’re IDs – and have about as much to do with having established baseline competence to drive as French fries have to do with France. If it were not so, there’d be far fewer accidents.

Many people regard an “accident” as a random, unavoidable event. Something akin to an act of God – as the insurance mobsters say. But most “accidents” are not acts of God. An act of God is a huge tree branch dropping on the roof of your car; i.e., something you could not realistically have foreseen and taken measures to avoid. Most so-called “accidents” are events that could have been avoided by attentive, competent driving. They are the result of such avoidable errors as driving too fast for conditions or the driver’s abilities. Or by driving too slow – as by pulling out in front of traffic and expecting it to yield to you. It is also not an “accident” when you run into the vehicle ahead of you because you were following too closely to stop in time or because you just weren’t paying attention and didn’t notice that the car ahead of you had slowed down. It is definitely not an “accident” when a driver who can’t meanders across the double yellow and into the path of another vehicle coming the other way.

Such “accidents” don’t happen – as the saying goes. More accurately, they do not have to happen. They are caused by driver error. There’s a cause to be made that driver’s who err – and lose control of their car and get into “accidents” – are drivers who need remedial training. Who – arguably – ought to be required to take a substantive driver competence test in order to retain their license to drive.

If, that is, we must persist in this silly business of pretending that a driver’s license is something like a high school diploma (or, these days, an undergraduate degree). That is to say, a measure of baseline competence rather than what it actually is. That being a government-issued ID which everyone who isn’t actually homeless must possess in order to be able to apply for a job, open a bank account (or cash a check) or buy cough syrup, for that matter. Observe that none of the foregoing things have anything to do with driving. The “test” one is obliged to take to get this government ID has about as much to do with establishing that the applicant has baseline skill behind the wheel as wearing a surgical mask had to do with stopping the spread.

If we’re going to call these IDs driver’s licenses, then perhaps establishing baseline competence ought to be a requirement. This arguably ought to include a meaningful, real-world driving test on the road – as opposed to driving around the parking lot at the DMV. The applicant arguably ought to demonstrate that he or she can competently execute lane changes and merges with faster-moving traffic. That he or she can competently pull out from a sidestreet onto a busy main street. They should be required to drive on a road with curves, at a speed congruent with the speed limit, while keeping the vehicle in its travel lane. Wandering across the double yellow would constitute an immediate failure. The applicant also ought to have to demonstrate his or her ability to park curbside, without any “assistance” from “technology.”

If this is expecting too much then what is the point of pretending a driver’s license has anything to do with baseline competence to drive? Maybe the honest thing would be to stop calling it that and autonomize all cars and require everyone to be a passenger. This is of course what the long-term plan is and we’re pretty close now to its fulfillment. If you cannot see that the pushing of what is styled “assistance” technology is the road to what is styled autonomous driving – meaning you ride rather than drive in a car controlled by the government-corporate nexus – then you haven’t got eyes (or brains).

Meanwhile, a driver who has an “accident” is prima facie a driver whose skill or judgment (or both) is lacking. In aviation, pilots who have “accidents” are checked out, if not actually forbidden from flying again until they can prove they are competent to fly. Why should it be any different? If anything, drivers are more dangerous because there are more of them. Aviation “accidents” – when they happen – get a lot of notice because they’re more noticeable, which they are because they’re so uncommon. Thousands of “accidents” involving drivers happen every day and for that reason are less noticeable. We just accept that “accidents happen.”

Maybe we ought to be less accepting – and more demanding – as regards what it means to have a license to drive.

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