Driving Schools in Ireland: The Scary Movie Under Scrutiny!
[ad_1]
Now that the publicity surrounding Global Warming is increasing and the general public are becoming aware of what part they have to play in order to curb the increase in co2 emissions it’s time for Driving Schools in Ireland to play their part.
It is no longer remotely acceptable to be teaching young learner drivers just to pass the Driving Test. This has been a recipe for more disasters over the last ten years than just the threat to the environment that poor driving brings. The threat to the environment of releasing learner drivers onto the roads in Ireland in ever increasing numbers without basic eco awareness skills will be measurable in years to come.
We are already paying dearly for a Driving Tuition and Driving Test fiasco which can and must be radically changed. To be taken seriously and to provide real value in Driving Lessons for their pupils it is essential that Driving Schools in Ireland must change their outlook and their practises. Not five years from now…not two years from now when the regulation of the profession is well under way but Right Now.
Unless learner drivers are taught from day one the essential skills to achieve significant reductions in C02 emissions by careful and knowledgeable driving and by sensible choice of vehicle, Ireland is facing a monumental catastrophe. Driving Schools in Ireland are contributing to the worsening situation by failing to highlight the need for advanced skills from the first day the pupil sits behind the wheel.
When a learner driver is taught the necessary advanced Driving techniques, many of which are eco friendly, he will be reducing the drain on his bank balance at the same time as improving the emission contribution of the vehicle he is driving. Eco friendly techniques such as looking ahead and easing off the gas pedal in advance of having to stop the vehicle, are easy to perfect with a little practise.
Since there is little or no culture of Learning to Drive in Ireland through professional Driving Instruction, it is about time that the Driving Schools in Ireland themselves took action and made it common practise to teach each Learner Driver skills for life and eco friendly driving techniques and resist the temptation to restrict lessons to Driving Test routes. Preparing pupils for an imminent Driving Test it is certainly necessary to acquaint them fully with the general area where the Test will take place. Test route fixation however does not play any useful role in preparing a driver for what he or she will experience in the real world and certainly does not equip the student with what they will face on all Irish rural roads.
For sure it is less profitable to take a pupil on carriageways and show them the importance of country road skills. One can clock up perhaps as much as fifty miles on a two hour Driving lesson that encompasses the above but there will be a world of difference in the calibre of this pupil compared with a pupil who has just been ferried around Driving Test routes in an urban environment week after week. It is the duty of all Driving Schools in Ireland to give instruction on carriageways and in rural settings.
In the case of Driving in Ireland, while we have expanded our cities and towns dramatically over the last twenty years, with the accompanying exponential growth in vehicle traffic, a large proportion of a Driver’s life is spent on rural roads which were never designed to carry this volume of traffic and were not designed with the Learner Driver in mind.
Many serious accidents happen on Irish rural roads particularly in the vicinity of Towns and Cities purely because the drivers concerned have not been taught to appreciate how difficult it is to deal with an emergency on these roads. Reading the clues and becoming something of a forensic motorist will go a long way to keeping a driver safe in the Irish rural environment.
To end on a very sombre note the following paragraph reveals the extent to which Ireland has drifted steadily towards motoring Armageddon over the last decade and why it is essential for those involved in training learner drivers to sit up and take note and more importantly take action on in-depth, real world, skills for life techniques!
It appears that Ireland will be firmly ensconced in third place in the World rankings of rate of emissions per head of population only surpassed by Luxembourg and the United States, when a new report is published shortly. Due primarily to a massive increase in emissions from the Transport sector Ireland is facing an uphill battle. Already sums are being put aside to cope with the inevitable fines as a result of failure to reach the Kyoto Protocol targets and until and unless all drivers and all Driving Schools in Ireland change their habits, the future of driving in Ireland looks rather bleak.
[ad_2]
Source by Robin Piggott