Driving licences and tests - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[Mark A]

An engaging (and stats-rich) read around the issue of ... well, the article does touch on driving tests too. (Hosted on Substack and hopefully available to read without a subscription, you may need to dismiss a dialogue box that appears...)

Mark

https://notes.archie-hall.com/p/reflections-on-britains-triage-ward

Thinking about that piece, it makes some sharp observations that apply more widely than the examples it gives. The way that particularly since Covid, but this is something that didn't start with Covid, something that's high priority or high profile is often still handled well and appropriately, it's the lower priority stuff that's often started to drift - and it's that which impacts people's day-to-day living and which gives people the impression that their lives are awry - which leads to consequences, not least in politics.

Dragging this on topic, thinking of the railway in the west, while its true that the core, the Great Western Main Line itself is more than a little glass-backed, some of the more minor routes, including the ones that have a sparse service, when it comes to their patterns of service and resilience of their services... well, it's holding back the contribution that they can make to people's lives.

Mark

[Sixty3Closure]

Why is it, and why ever was it, possible for people and bots to buy-up driving tests slots for resale?

The bots is because the government developers can't respond quickly enough to close the exploits in the web page. As soon as they close off one another dozen scripts will appear. The block booking is also supposed to be closed off but again its probably profitable enough to develop workarounds. And unless its changed its will be a central team responsible for all the DVLA^▸ (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency)/SA rather than a gov.uk developer sat there responding to bots and exploits.

Having just recently sat my test and discussed this with my instructor I was quite surprised at how poorly paid examiners were. Apparently several of the instructors in my area were approached about becoming examiners and all laughed at the idea. Apart from a significant pay cut as mentioned in one of the articles above there was also an increase in the number of tests you had to oversee a few years ago and reduction in the time allowed for paperwork which caused a lot of resentment and stress. From memory it was an increase from 6 to 7 tests a day which if you allow each test being 45-50 mins including actually getting to the car itself and the 'chat' at the end doesn't leave long for typing it all up never mind destressing or taking a break. Its also a lot less flexible and as my instructor said if he doesn't like someone he can turn down the work.

I got chatting to my examiner on my test who commented on how nice it was to be able to have a chat with someone his own age (50+) and talked about why he was thinking of changing careers. When I mentioned I'd worked for the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) World Service there were loads of questions and I was just trying to think of a polite way of saying 'be quiet I'm trying to drive'.

I'm not sure I could cope with sitting in the car with mainly teenagers all day and trusting their driving.

[Chris from Nailsea]

I'm not sure I could cope with sitting in the car with mainly teenagers all day and trusting their driving.

You'll soon be sitting in the train with teenagers driving, apparently.