Obviously
You still have to go to the Post Office (or send payment by post) to pay for traffic offences.
Did we lose a war?
Gotta keep those An Post workers âbusyâ.
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Itâs very difficult to learn how to drive properly without going out by yourself. Driving requires repetitive practice, and like most things, learning from your mistakes (Dreyfus and Dreyfus actually used it in their study on adult skillâs acquisition). Thatâs why it isnât adhered to as it isnât practically impossible to have someone qualified with you everyday. The Gards know this. The learner permit/provision rules are quite draconian in this country as opposed to many places in the US and so enforcement is lax.
Good driver education is whatâs required and to be fair, this country had made huge strides in that regard. Some of the stuff brought in (like N plates) are a nonsense but overall thereâs been some good efforts made, including trying to get it into more schools.
The poor man has my sympathy but his suggestion of prosecuting parents is laughable.
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No it isnât. Not if he knowingly let his daughter, who was clearly a poor driver, out in his car illegally. He bears responsibility for this.
Tim, imagine for an awful minute that it was your family killed. Iâd be after the car owner first and foremost." Itâll bring noone back" is no reason not to do so.
It is laughable.
Firstly, from a legal point of you, even if you got a parent to sign some letter (which insurance companies do I understand force car owners to sign if they have named drivers who are learners, but that is for insurance cover), under the various fundamental rights of the Constitution I just do not see how it is possible to realistically prosecute you criminally. You cannot stop someone from picking up the keys and going out driving at all times. Unless we are calling for car keys to become like gun storage in this country (which has been previously prosecuted). If you drive unaccompanied you are according the High Court in breach of the terms of your learner permit, but criminally prosecuting the holder of the insurance policy? Thatâs absurd.
Secondly, it ignores the practicalities of learning to drive. Some learn with their parents, some learn when theyâre older. Some come from foreign countries. Many get their own car and policy when learning (which costs a fortune) as it is the only practical way to learn. Who is held accountable then?
It is up to the learner to find qualified people to drive with. Personal responsibility needs to be taken here.
Morally speaking you might have a point, a parent who buys their kids a car and isnât confident in their ability to drive safely or doesnât care has some moral responsibility if they let them out on the road. We donât know the full facts here though to make that judgement.
Iâm talking about him suggesting prosecution if the parents knowingly and willingly allowed their daughter to drive illegally. I know a criminal prosecution wouldnât stand. Iâd be tempted to go after them in the civil courts if it were me. The need to gain experience as an excuse to drive unaccompanied is a strange one from you. You could use that argument to do away with the driving licence altogether.
Eh no itâs not.
I didnât say people should just be allowed out on the roads by themselves, just that the practicalities of someone waiting for their test and learning means having someone experienced is simply not possible all the time.
In plenty of other countries, after a period on a learner permit and with a few months experience you can drive unaccompanied from school/work within certain hours.
The Irish system recognises this even after one gets their test, forcing N stickers up on cars for two years. There are parts to learning how to drive that are just not relevant to having someone in the car with you.
Youâre displaying screaming mullally characteristics here, Flatty
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He had the full license got by the time the car arrived from Hong Kong.
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Or driven without tax or insurance.
It was legal to do so back in the day.
if that lady wasnât qualified to drive on her own then tough shit on her is my take on this. she wasnât qualified, she shouldnt have been driving. she knew the rules. she broke the law. nobody forced her to break the law.
this is the same as the argument for or against a fella having 3 pints and driving the 2 miles home. he is not supposed to do it because its against some daft law, but just like the learner driver who needs to use their car its difficult for that man to get home so he chances it. in both cases you have an almost 100% chance of getting away with unless you crash into someone else.
Not on your first provisional it wasnât. It may have been legal to drive on the second, but on the third and subsequent provisionals again it wasnât legal. It was never enforced though and it didnât invalidate insurance, so nobody ever really cared about it. So you had people who had failed the test multiple times driving around without a care in the world.
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I know. I drove on my second provisional and passed my test. I wasnât allowed drive on my own without it.
Our neighbour failed the test 14 times until, in a classic solution of its day, the govt cleared the backlog of tests by simply giving everyone with a provisional a full licence.
Lies.
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Not so sure about that. In 1979 there was a postal strike for four months (my father was on the picket) and there was a massive backlog of test and license applications. They gave people full licenses, my brother for example never did the test he just got the license.
And my sisters used the trick of applying for provisionals in their maiden names and then later on in their married names.