Are You Smarter Than a Learner Driver?

My mother learned to drive on the prairies as a teenager. She paid her two dollars, was given a driver's licence and then learned to drive. I learned in my teens as well, studying the driving guide, took a twenty question test, spent some time as a learner, passed a 20 minute road test and I had my licence. My children both took driver training during their Learner stage because I could afford it and felt it was an important life skill. They passed a 25 question test, spent time in the Learner stage, were tested, moved on to the Novice stage, were tested and then got their full licence. Quite a difference, isn't it?

I would be willing to bet that all of us, the middle aged or older better than average driver crowd, would be hard pressed to equal or better the score of a newly minted class 5 driver on ICBC's on line driver's test. I base that remark on what I see happening around me when I drive and the correspondence that I have had with visitors to my DriveSmartBC web site. Many drivers have failed to maintain the knowledge of the road rules that they need to drive safely and properly. In addition, the rules have changed since I obtained my class 5.

I challenge you! Visit www.icbc.comand look for the link to the Practice Knowledge Test on the home page below the green tab labelled New Driver. Take the full test and answer all 25 questions that will be presented to you at random. Did you answer at least 80% of the questions correctly? If not and you were trying to obtain your Learner's, you would be told to go home and study some more because you didn't have sufficient knowledge of the rules to start learning to drive.

Good luck!

The author is a retired constable with many years of experience in traffic law enforcement. To comment or learn more, please visit www.drivesmartbc.ca.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.