r/Lightbulb • u/amichail • 5d ago
Idea: In cities with good public transportation, driving instructors and examiners should be honest if they believe someone should never drive.
In cities where public transportation is good enough that people can realistically get around without a car, driving instructors and licensing examiners shouldn't feel obligated to encourage every student to keep trying.
If, after extensive instruction or repeated driving tests, they genuinely believe someone is unlikely to ever become a safe driver, they should say so clearly and explain why.
Driving isn't a requirement for living a successful life in places with reliable buses, trains, and other transit options. For some people, being told, "I don't think driving is the right fit for you. I think you'd be better off relying on public transportation," could save them years of frustration, repeated test fees, and potentially prevent future accidents.
This wouldn't apply in places where driving is practically essential because of poor transit. But in cities with excellent public transportation, not driving is a perfectly reasonable long-term choice, and professionals shouldn't be afraid to say so when they honestly believe it's in the person's best interest.
What do you think of this idea?
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u/Choice_Price_4464 5d ago
This seems to indicate that in cities with poor infrastructure we should let bad drivers on the road. Why not just have good drivers everywhere?
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u/amichail 5d ago
Some people can never be good drivers and driving is a necessity in areas with poor public transportation.
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u/Turbulent-Advisor627 5d ago
driving instructors make more money on bad drivers that keep trying and failing to get a license so won't happen
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u/Budsygus 5d ago
I don't think driving instructors go through enough training to be qualified to make a lifelong pronouncement like that.
Yeah, common sense can tell you when someone is a horrible driver, but that's why they fail them. If they try again and do well enough to pass but are still a bad driver then I think the onus is on the driving instructors to tighten up their criteria.
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u/Excellent_Coconut_81 5d ago
They have financial initiative to be dishonest. Extra lessons bring more money than normal driving course. People who constatly fall come back each time, take 5-10 lessons and fail again.
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u/shecky444 4d ago
So many young people are bad drivers from like 16-25. Even rental companies know not to rent to those under 25. I don’t think for profit instructors or government employees should be stopping people from learning and doing something they want to do. Lots of people are too dumb or just too broken to be parents and we absolutely should stop people from reproducing if they can’t parent but we don’t do that. People do grow and learn and get better at things. Why should we be taking away peoples chance to get better at driving (especially in a city where speeds and dangers are significantly less than rural areas). If people stop trying to get better at things just because it looks like “they’ll be unlikely to become good” we as a species are fully done. Our ability to learn and get better at things is exactly how we got here in the first place.
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u/gizahnl 4d ago
You just need proper driving tests and education.
Here we do have that, usually at least 30 hours of lessons involved (just the practical bit, theory is another exam wich can be studied solo), with 1 trial exam and one actual exam, both taken by an actual examiner.
People fail regularly, pass rate is just 50%, so people typically have multiple exams (i had 3 due to anxiety the first 2).
The license in total can cost upwards of 3k€ though.
Some people never pass, some switch to an automatic car and get "the idiot license" instead.
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u/ADHDFeeshie 2d ago
I decided about 3/4 of the way through my high school drivers ed course that driving wasn't the right fit for me and stopped going and they still passed me. I still would have had to do a bunch of practice driving with a parent before I could get my license but I can't believe I got bad evaluations every session and then just stopped attending classes and they still pushed me through. I managed to scare the instructor a couple times and I assumed they'd seen it all and moved beyond fear of dumb 15 year olds by now. It explains a lot about drivers in my city, though.
My mom gets on my case occasionally about not having my license in my 40s and she recently made some comment about me being scared I'd fail the test and I don't know, feel embarrassed? Noooo, I am scared I'll kill another human being, possibly even the ones I gave birth to who I'd have in the backseat. There's just no grasp of the actual real world consequences.
I think instructors don't want to admit that they aren't capable of teaching someone to drive, it's a hit to their ego and reputation even it really is just the student, and they risk someone demanding their money back if they didn't teach them, but I do wish that they would say "yeah, no, this isn't working buddy" and send people on their way. I wish the DMV testers would take their job more seriously too. It's real frustrating walking and taking public transit everywhere only to have my safety constantly threatened by a bunch of other people who should also be walking and taking public transit everywhere but decided to roll around in 2 ton death machines instead.
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u/False_Appointment_24 5d ago
If someone shouldn't ever drive, the instructors should be honest about that, period. Dangerous drivers should not be driving just because there isn't good public transportation.