Forgetting the lessons of a driving test

It has to be said that in modern road use safety does not always seem to be at forefront of everyone’s mind. It doesn't  need to be excessive, but after the third driver I had seen this week alone starting to break to turn without having signaled  caused a panic in the driver behind them who was taken completely of guard, it got me thinking. How many of the meticulous rules of the driving test, that we have all had to pass to be on the road, do most people actually follow now that there is no one watching over their shoulder.

Ok so the most obvious point that  I’ve already mentioned is that some people seem to think that they don’t need to indicate in order to turn, or even worse to change lanes on the motorway. This is an outright fail on a driving test and with good reason. Failing to signal and then braking suddenly or turning into someone else’s path gives them no hints at what your going to do and can be extremely dangerous.

Another point that most people seem to have forgotten is the speed limit, going over which is, again, an instant fail on your test. The issue with this is not so much the people doing 90 mph down the motorways, but more those that do 45 in the 30 zones. Speeding really does cause a lot of issues with safety especially in built up areas. The limits are set up for a reason to make sure that the drivers are in full control of their cars and although this is one of the main things that you are taught when learning to drive people seem to disregard it at the first possible opportunity for sake of cutting down on travel time.

These are only two examples of things that people seem to forget after they no longer have somebody watching over them, but it’s possible to list them off, for example: are you still doing all of your mirror checks as you set off, pass around parked cars and generally drive around? This says a lot about the way that driving ability is tested and the frequency with which it should be done, I would love to see some of these drivers cope with a test at the poor quality that they drive at. Most of all however if you look at the ridiculous way in which some people drive it becomes very apparent were a lot of road accidents come from. No matter what we can try to blame for things going wrong on the road, most of it is always going to come down to human error and worse than that human stupidity!