Well, I thought it was too easy when I got mine, and to help myself out, I trained to get a SCCA licence, and am working on my CDL. That CDL licence is what it should be like to get any licence. It will never happen though because most teens would look at the requirements, roll their eyes, and say “It’s not fair”. Believe me, that even happened with the regular licence.
Keep on truckin,
Adrianspeeder
Forget how to read?
That is another reason why the USA needs a national public transportation system. Driving a car should NOT be a necessity. It was not a necessity 60 years ago because there was decent public transportation, buses, some remaining interurban and trolley lines, and lots of trains. With hybrid bus technology and a decent Amtrak, a national network that serves all communities could be a real asset.
Can you imagine what the LA-area incident would have been like if compressed Hydrogen gas had been on that SUV.
Electric battery technology is the way to USA energy independence and not this rediculous Hydrogen economy - fuel cell boondogle.
The public transportation system was never as good as you think. In most of the country, before the automobile, no one reguarly went further than they could walk in an hour or so.
While I am not old enough to remember 60 years ago, I do have memories of 50 years ago. The farm town my family lived never did have public transit ans was miles from the nearest railroad.
There have been a lot of excellent points made here, and as much as I agree with most of them the issue for any meaningful change is one of practicality. Our society has developed a reliance on the automobile over the years that makes it almost impossible to change the status quo. Adrianspeeder has it exactly right when he says that the teenagers will start hollering “That’s not fair”, and they won’t be the only ones. Add to that the multitude of immigrants that probably would be denied a driver license and you begin to see the scope of this. While you and I may agree that it should be much tougher to get a license, we all come from the same perspective. That perspective, simply stated, is “I’ve got mine, too bad for you.” ValleyX called that one with the comment that “Everyone thinks they’re a better than average driver”. I’ll give him a lot of credit for being honest enough to include himself in that. We should all be so honest.
So where does that leave us? The only route I see from a practical standpoint is better education coupled with tougher enforcement. No solution is cheap, but that would cost a lot less than an overhaul of the infrastructure to provide better public transportation. Even if we could afford that overhaul, could we convince people to give up the freedom of their own wheels? The freedom to go where they want when they want without having to deal with some other entity’s timetable or schedule? I doubt it. We’ve all become too spoiled, myself included. Consider this, though. Suppose that serious traffic violations resulted in confiscation of the violator’s car. The car would go, upon conviction, directly to the crusher. If you still owe payments, tough. Sounds good to me, but consider how much work that would create for the lawyers… It’s never as easy as it looks, is it?
Ah, well, just one old engineer’s opinion. Good thread, guys. Keep it coming!
–JD
Not worth my time anymore.
Trouble is, I really do think I’m better than average and I’ll match my driving record against most people. In 38 years of driving, I’ve had one parking ticket and one moving violation and that was for driving the wrong way on the beach in Florida. Only reason I turned around was because I had gotten stuck in the sand and couldn’t get out without going the wrong way but the county mountie who gave me the ticket didn’t want to hear about that, he was more interested in impressing the bikini-clad babe he was talking to before he cited me, but I could be wrong.
This isn’t to say I couldn’t go out tomorrow and do something incredibly stupid, I know better than that, but we all see things on the street that make us shudder and wonder. One of the things I see all the time is on the freeway that I drive to and from work, when a car passes me at a speed considerably over the speed limit, the driver is frequently female and probably under 25. What is it about these girls that make them think they’re ace drivers and speed demons? Doesn’t seem to matter about the weather conditions either, they’re in a hurry to get wherever they’re going.
This is straying far from a railroad topic but when I’m driving to work, that’s what I’m going to do, a little railroading, just to keep it in the spirit of things.
Yep. Add GM, Ford, and all the other vehicle manufacturers; the oil companies, and all the other firms and individuals that make a living in this industry. Think aftermarket accessories, Kragen, AutoZone etc. The success of all these companies is helped to some degree by keeping drivers licenses easy to obtain and easy to keep.
MP
‘Tougher law enforcement / Stricter Licensing’ sounds good as a political sound bite, but it’s not really enforceable. Illinois enacted much stricter DUI laws where they can confiscate the license plates and/or car, so what do offenders do - they get their wife, mother, friend, etc to buy the car and drive it unlicensed and uninsured. CDL licensing got stricter too, but our former Governor is under indictment for selling CDLs in exchange for campaign contributions. We also have mandatory insurance laws, but a number of ‘companies’ have sprung up that will sell you insurance for 1 month so you can get licensed or beat the no-insurance charge in traffic court.
The legal system is geared towards enforcement after a crime has occurred, not before. There aren’t enogh police, ATF, DEA agents to check for potential criminals, nor is anyone willing to fund that level of law enforcement, not to mention issues with innocent until guilty, unreasonable search & seizure etc. There’s no funding for jails either so they’re overcrowded and people get out on early release programs.
Maybe some type of technical solution could work where drivers are ‘registered’ to the vehicle’s computer, which checks a central database using a wireless connection. That would take years to phase in and some 13 year old kid would probably figure out how to hack it.
…Certainly agree with above statement of speeding and female and under 25…Where does that attitude come from…It for sure must be wide spread…
ValleyX–
I’ll take your word for the good driving record. I don’t doubt it for a second. I’m proud of my clean record too, and I’ll admit that I think I’m better than the average driver also. I wonder, though, what would happen if all of us were to drive down the same highway together for a few miles. Think we’d find flaws in each other’s performance? I’m willing to bet we would. The point, at least in part, is that we’re all human, and we all make mistakes. If we’re lucky, our mistakes result in close calls and nothing more. If we’re learning from them, we’re improving. Those young ladies that you’re talking about are suffering from the same malady that we all did at that age: overconfidence. If they’re not utterly stupid, they’ll learn.
Consider this, though. Is it possible that railroaders are generally better drivers than most people? After all, we’re used to obeying very strict operating rules, and safety is the number one rule of all. We don’t get a traffic ticket when we break the rules, we get fired! Talk about incentive… But that’s my point. When I say education and enforcement, I know all the pitfalls. As unlikely as it is to happen, I still say that’s the only practical course of action. Maybe the very first part of the education process needs to be on how many ways there are to lose your license. Incentive, incentive, incentive…
–JD
Mrf. Schmidt. You might look into the question of whether public transportation for your farm town was provided during WWII. A lot of small towns lost rural and intercitiy local bus service after WWII when patronage declined as rationing was removed. Also, most intercity buses now use the Interstate Highways instead of passing though and serving small towns.