A privilege, not a right

Resident guest blogger @FailCar has been ranting again. Fortunately he has once again chosen PetrolBlog as the platform to vent his spleen on. As usual, the man speaks a whole lot of sense.

A privilege and not a right. I have a couple of friends who are police officers and I often hear them using that term when talking about motorists ‘it’s a privilege to be able to drive, not a right’ and much as I usually disagree with everything they say, (because I like winding them/everybody up). But in this case, it has got me thinking.

So many people just assume driving as a rite of passage, you turn 17 take a test and hey presto, you’re out on the road and loving it. Or maybe not. This weekend for instance while out driving I was stuck behind many people, and although I have gone on about this before some of these people genuinely terrify me because it seems that on a confidence rating of 1-10 they measure about -4.

These people are not new drivers though, they are motorists that have been driving for years and yet there they are bumbling around taking hours to turn right at junctions and generally being a nuisance to themselves and others. These people do not like driving, they perhaps don’t want to be driving and don’t feel comfortable doing it. So why the heck are these the exact people that are tanking about in X-trails, Freelanders etc. It’s lethal. I know it might all sound a bit 'whinging Daily Mail reader' but the simple fact is that it’s bloody dangerous.

How many friends do you have that genuinely you wouldn’t trust them to operate a kitchen blender safely? (I have several) And yet there they are mooching about on the roads in two tonnes of metal. I can’t help but think that given that the number one cause of accidents in the UK is ‘failed to look’ that half these accidents could be prevented if more idiots were taken off the roads.

It’s not just the unconfident, bumbling, congesting inducing idiots though. There are also those with absolutely no respect whatsoever.  How many times have you sat there watching Police Camera Action (or similar) and you see some guy get pulled over who is way, way over the legal limit. At the end you hear the narrator say, ‘He got fined £900 and was banned from driving for two years’. Two years? Seriously?  That’s literally mental.

Aside from just being shot on site that person should not be driving again. I see absolutely no excuse for people that do that.  If you go out, get wasted and think it’s fine to drive home then clearly you must be an idiot and therefore should not be driving in the first place drunk or not.

Then you get the other kind of driver. Just as a lack of confidence is an issue so is the over confident over taking driver. If you do decide to overtake someone (which seems to be a cardinal sin these days) just wait until a clear, well sighted bit of road comes up. Otherwise you will probably go head on into some poor bugger and get yourself a Darwin award in the process.

I’m all for giving the car some beans but there is a time and a place for this. Wales for instance or any well sighted road. If you go hoofing round a bend at 90 mph and it’s obscured by a hedgerow, don’t be surprised when your brain now becomes one with the rear diff of a Massey Ferguson. But like I said, only idiots would do this and without them we will all be much safer. At any speed.

So much as it pains me to agree with my police mates I can’t help but think that the future of road safety does not lie with pissing away money on cameras, road engineering or blanket lowering of speed limits. We just need to take a really good look at who is driving/riding on Britain’s roads and the ability to drive should be regarded as an honour of the highest order.  I say we start now, so who is going to be the one to tell George Michael to get a bus pass?

If George Michael is going to get the bus, then surely Alistair Stewart should be getting on his bike? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1434592/Alastair-Stewart-gets-drink-driving-ban.html. Thanks to James aka @TheCarDisco for pointing this old, but golden fact out.