Ps Please!

First of all, I should clarify something from my previous post. 

If you remember, I said I quite dislike people who start conversations with "Hey, sup?" 

If you do happen to talk to me, my whole opinion of you won't be based on whether you say "Hey, sup?" I don't mind if you start the conversation like that, as long as you actually have something to tell me when I say "How about you?" after I have answered your question, hopefully by saying something interesting I may have done. If however, you simply say "not much" and  leave me with nothing to reply to, I am not going to be a fan of yours.

Now, onto the actual topic I  had the intention of writing about in this blog.
Soon, I shall be going for my licence. Now, if you aren't a resident of Victoria, let me explain the process of how you go about getting your licence here in the land of Over-the-top-extreme-requirements-before-you-can-drive-because-we're-retarded. 

First of all, you get your leaner permit. Jolly excitiing stuff. To get your learners permit, you have to read this book.. uh.. I don't remember what it's called, I'm sure it's around here somewhere... ANYWAY, you read this book about road rules yeah? You "study" said book, and then you do a computer test on Australian road rules. Okay fair enough, most places make you do a test anyway, you should probably know the road rules before you start driving, or you wouldn't be able to forget them later when you get your licence. 

Now, when you get your Ls you get another book; the Learner Log Book. This book, is where you record your hours, and check off all the things you've learnt in the different stages of driving. How fun! Are you exicited? 

You have to record 120 hours of driving. Which must include 10 hours of night driving. Sounds fair enough, yeah? I mean, you just write down the time you started and the time you finished and add it up in a total right? WRONG. 

In the log book, each time you drive, you have to include; 

• The date. 
• The time you started am/pm (heaven forbid that you should use 24 hour time, that might be a bit hard for the people at Vic Roads.)
• The time you finished am/pm. 
• The total driving time "this trip". 
• The running total of driving time (as in, adding up all the driving you've done so far in the whole book).
• Night driving time"this trip".
• Running night driving time.
• Car registration. 
• Odometer reading start and finish.
• Traffic conditions: light, moderate or heavy. 
• Weather:  wet or dry. 
• Light conditions: day, dusk or night.
• Type of road: residential roads, main roads, inner city roads, freeway, rural highway, other rural roads and gravel roads.
• Superivising driver's licence number.
• Supervising driver's signature

And if that wasn't enough, you also have to write the learner driver's name and permit number at the top of every page. 

Now I don't know if anyone else agrees, and I hate to put a damper on Vic Roads effort to look like they are making more of an effort when it comes to new drivers, but does half of that stuff even matter?

Apart from the recording of 10 hours of night driving, you are not required to have any other kind of driving recorded. So really, you don't need to say whether it was dusk or day, because what's it matter as long as it wasn't nightime? You don't need to say if you were driving when it was wet, or dry, because you aren't required to have any hours of wet driving. Do they even check if you've driven in the rain?

You aren't required to have a certain amount of time on any sorts of roads, so why do you need to tell them what kind of roads you're driving on? 

The odometer reading makes sence, I guess if you have a whole lot of hours and not many kilometres it's obvious you're lying.. but if someone's going to lie about how many hours they've done, I'm sure they've figured that out already and there is no way to check if they are lying about the odometer reading, because it is all past tence. 

Now, I'm not just complaining about this being a stupid idea, I do have a point and my point is. If Vic Roads really wanted to make a difference to how safe of a driving you are before you get your Ps, they should include other requirements apart from 10 hours of night driving, instead of just putting a bunch of useless things in their book that you fill out for no aparent reason. 

Vic Roads has said that the 120 hours of driving makes you a safer driver when you're on your Ps. I have no doubt that it does. But if you do 120 hours of driving only during the day in sunny conditions and at night in fine conditions, you're not a safe driver when it comes to driving at night in the rain, are you?

My point is, if Vic Roads really wanted to make people safer drivers, they'd have more requirements within the 120 hours of driving. Driving in the rain, driving on the freeway, driving in heavy traffic, etc. Instead of just including them as pointless things to tick off in the book so it just looks like they care about them.

Anyway, after you've done your 120 hours, you're ready to get your licence. Though if I were you, I'd get more than 120 hours, because you have to show your log book to them, and if they don't think it's good enough, they'll cross them out.

I learnt from this article that Vic Roads says they won't accept a log book if;

"Parts of any pages were damaged, illegible or missing;
Log entries had not been completed in pen;
Any entries had been deleted or modified;
Learner drivers' details were not written at the top of each page; or
VicRoads was not satisfied the entries were valid or complete.."

I'm not sure how that last one works exactly since your book is assesed by an individual person and whether it is acceptable is partly based on their opinion as an individual, there's no board that discusses this. 

Well done Vic Roads, you're fool proof system is based on the judgement and opinion of the one person over the counter, who looks over the learner driver's log book before they do their driving test. 

Oh and don't think that all you have to do to get your licence is fill out that book and show it to them when you're done by the way, cause you'd be wrong again. 

Before you get your licence, or even do your driving test. You have to do the Hazard Perception Test.

That is, a computer test about how you well.. percieve hazards on the road. Basically, it's a simulated kind of driving thing on a computer, and you click on the mouse when you should slow down in a certain situation and stuff like that. It's really quite unnessary, especially since the percentage you need to pass is quite low, and if you did make that many mistakes on the road, you may either kill someone or die yourself. 

I highly doubt the passing of this test makes a difference to how good of a driver you must be. Since the simulation is hardly anything like driving a real car. 

After you pass your Hazard Perception Test, you get to do the fun bit. The actual driving test.

The driving test goes for 45 Minutes, and in that time you have to demonstrate your competence as a driver. Including, changing lanes safely, turning right at an intersection all that kind of stuff. Plus you have to demonstrate you can successfully reverse parallel park or two point turn. I say 'or' because you don't have to do both, it depends on which one is chosen by the assesor for you. 

You have a time limit on these tasks and if you don't complete them in a certain time, you fail that part of the test. I'm not entirely sure why there needs to be a time limit on these things - I mean, fair enough you shouldn't take a billion years to park or turn around - but I don't know that you need to do either of those things extremely quickly. 

In the parallel park, you are not allowed to go back out to the starting position and start again if you do stuff it up, you must correct yourself from where you are. I'm sorry but.. why? If you were in a real life situation and you happened to need to parellel park, if you screwed up, you'd start again. You wouldn't just stop and say "Oh, darn I've failed. Well.. guess I can't park here now." unless you were some kind of retard.

Also, during your driving test, if you make more than 2 critical errors, such as; failing to indicate when turning or changing lanes, stalling the car if it's a manual test, failing your paralell park etc. You have failed the test. 

Oh and you better use your mirrors a whole lot because if you don't you're obviously a bad driver and don't deserve to have your licence. 

My driving instructor told me that he has had people do tests where he's sure they've failed, and then the tester has told them that they've passed, when he questioned the tester as to how the tester basically told him that the person used their mirrors a lot, how could they not pass? 

The reverse has also happened, sure they've passed they did great. No, no they haven't. They didn't use their mirrors enough. 

Can you see the point I'm making here? Vic Roads is very inconsistant with things they are strict about and things they aren't. 

"You didn't crash, or kill anyone, and your parallel park was beauitful.. buuuttt.. you didn't use your mirrors enough so you don't get your licence today."

"Now you, you can't paralell park to save your life, and you changed lanes across in front of someone, but you used your mirrors like a pro! I've never seen someone use their mirrors so much! Here, have your licence!" 

Now, I'm sure that's not how it went down, but you can understand the point I'm making.

It's true that it used to be too easy for people to get their licence, but I think Vic Roads may have gone a bit too far the other way. P platers do have the highest death toll, but I have to say, having all these extra things we have to do to get our licence, isn't going to stop idiots for being idiots. Unless you can devise a test for that, I'm sorry Vic Roads, but all your doing is making the people who probably already would've been pretty safe drivers, even safer drivers and you're still not stoping the idiots from being idiots, no matter how many driving hours they have.

Oh I almost forgot, once you've gone though all of that and got your licence, for the first year, you are on your red Ps. Hope you didn't want to take your friends anywhere because you have a passenger restriction.

Only one passenger allowed in the car between the age of 16 and 21. With the exclusion of family. 

Why you ask? Because Vic Roads research into P plate crashes has shown that having more people in the car increases the likeliness of the driver to speed.

Well Vic Roads, I bet that is true. But like I said before, as much as it does suck, the adding of this law isn't going to stop idiots from being idiots. They would've been the ones breaking the law speeding before this law, now they'll just break the law twice by having people that aren't supposed to be in the car in the car and speeding. While the rest of us who actually obey the law and wouldn't be speeding anyway, have to suffer. 

Oh and not to mention, because of this law, say there is a party? Before, one person would take home 4 other people, yes? One designated driver for every 4 people. Well, now half a party has to be designated drivers. Okay sure, some of them may be on their green Ps, but most people's friends would be pretty close to the same age as them, so mahority of them would be on their red Ps... ergo.. drunk, speeding P platers.

Also, since a red P plater can only drive one other person around, we need more cars and drivers to get places so guess what? More P platers on the road! Good idea, let's add more of who - by Vic Roads statistics - are the most dangerous drivers on the road, to the road! That will definitely reduce P Plate crashes!

I can tell a lot of thought and anylysis went into this red P plates law before it was put into practice. 

I hate to say it but it seems to have the potential to create more problems than it solves. Vic Roads need to analyse the problems of why P platers are such dangerous drivers (for example, how many P platers do you see driving V6 Commodores?)  a lot more if they want to find actual solutions to the problem rather than things that look good on paper.

I hope you enjoyed my very very long rant. Believe it or not I may have forgotten some things.

I hope I'm not the only one who feels this way about all of this.
I'm not saying Vic Roads shouldn't do something about the death tolls on our roads and everything. I'm saying they should do something that works.

Enough rant from me. Have a very pleasant rest of your day. 

xoxo