There are a lot of unqualified, under-experienced and clueless drivers with valid licenses on the roads. They pose a danger to anyone sharing that road. What to do?
Right now the police only disqualify the worst of the worst. They don't do anything to improve driving skills. Most of our driving regulation seems to be in the hands of a capricious private institution, the insurers. Their approach is not to get people off the road but to make bad driving more expensive than good driving. A number of insurers are now trying to go from a problem based method (have an accident or get a ticket, your premium goes up) to a semi-intrusive monitoring (drive by their model and your too-high premium goes down) Unfortunately their models of good driving are too simplistic and the flaws are glaring. You plug one of these little cell enabled gps microprocessor into your car and it watches how you accelerate, brake, turn, what speed you drive, etc. If you go outside the model it send a digital black mark, too many black marks and they sock you with a premium increase. The problem is that it's not very smart. It doesn't know that the swerve and panic brake you did was to avoid a collision or the sudden acceleration in the middle of an intersection was to avoid a truck running the light or that your hard cornering avoided the kid on the bike. It punishes good outcome as well as bad ones.
Who wants an insurance actuary to decide what good driving is? What about drivers that drive too slowly or too passively? Both cause accidents but are not penalized by insurance companies.
Neither the insurance industry nor police encourage good driving. What we need is system of education and rewards which encourage learning skills which keep us and our vehicles safer. What about a system that rewards trained and (genuinely, not the farce at motor vehicle bureaus) tested drivers? Lower the lanes, places and speed which the untrained can use. Increase them for the trained.
Right now the police only disqualify the worst of the worst. They don't do anything to improve driving skills. Most of our driving regulation seems to be in the hands of a capricious private institution, the insurers. Their approach is not to get people off the road but to make bad driving more expensive than good driving. A number of insurers are now trying to go from a problem based method (have an accident or get a ticket, your premium goes up) to a semi-intrusive monitoring (drive by their model and your too-high premium goes down) Unfortunately their models of good driving are too simplistic and the flaws are glaring. You plug one of these little cell enabled gps microprocessor into your car and it watches how you accelerate, brake, turn, what speed you drive, etc. If you go outside the model it send a digital black mark, too many black marks and they sock you with a premium increase. The problem is that it's not very smart. It doesn't know that the swerve and panic brake you did was to avoid a collision or the sudden acceleration in the middle of an intersection was to avoid a truck running the light or that your hard cornering avoided the kid on the bike. It punishes good outcome as well as bad ones.
Who wants an insurance actuary to decide what good driving is? What about drivers that drive too slowly or too passively? Both cause accidents but are not penalized by insurance companies.
Neither the insurance industry nor police encourage good driving. What we need is system of education and rewards which encourage learning skills which keep us and our vehicles safer. What about a system that rewards trained and (genuinely, not the farce at motor vehicle bureaus) tested drivers? Lower the lanes, places and speed which the untrained can use. Increase them for the trained.
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