When I took the driving test for my LMV licence I was quite nonchalant, having driven a two-wheeler for about two years before and schooled in road rules by the extended family, mostly in the form of asides when other road users behaved badly, “Idiot! Pulling into traffic without looking, without signalling! What is this country coming to?”. At the RTO, for the driving test, I remember being packed into a Maruti 800 with five other 18-year-old women and the Motor Vehicles Inspector. The test was simple. The Inspector asked me to start the car, pull out (we were parked on the verge of a small lane in a residential area), drive 100m, turn left, pull over, stop. I did, with all the correct signals, slowing down and checking for traffic and so on. The two-wheeler test when I took it at 16 was even simpler. In an alley behind the RTO, I was told to drive the bike in a figure of eight without putting my foot down. Done and dusted. So does that make me a good driver though? I’d like to think I’m not bad, that I am a safe driver but, by the yardstick of that test everyone is a competent driver. The test is rudimentary and so brief that it is a wonder that they can assess anything more than one’s ability to change gears and accelerate.
Check out this video on the driving test in India that featured in BBC’s Top Gear with the (in)famous host, Jeremy Clarkson. In comparison, driving tests in other countries take at least an hour and test the applicant on roads with traffic (as opposed to testing on a side road with very low traffic), putting them through a range of situations and manoeuvres such as parallel parking, reversing around corners, and making emergency stops. There are even videos put out by the equivalent of the RTO in that country that explain the kind of things an applicant would be tested on.
Outsourcing licence testing process
Unfortunately, the proposed amendments to the Motor Vehicles (MV) Act do not address this. In addition, the Amendment Bill, passed in April 2017 by the Lok Sabha and currently awaiting its turn in the Rajya Sabha, seems to consider outsourcing the testing process. This opens the door for private establishments to register as testing centres; so instead of dealing only with the RTO, citizens would have the additional step of the testing centre and then the RTO who will issue the licence. Considering that registered driving schools in the country are hardly scrutinised or held accountable, there is little that makes us repose faith in outsourcing the testing process as well. In addition, the Bill does not talk about the potential conflict of interest if the driving school owner starts a testing centre as well. While outsourcing may allow for licence applications to be processed faster, whether it will result in better, safer driving is the question.
Do you need the 3Rs to get a licence?
The Bill also aims to remove the minimum educational qualification requirement for commercial drivers. This could be a two-edged sword. On one hand, driving ability should not require education; after all if one is in a foreign land and cannot read or understand the local language that does not bar one from legally driving. The question though is how this will affect commercial drivers who carry hazardous substances. Handling these in emergencies requires special training and unless that training can be innovatively given such that reading/writing is not required, this change in the Bill can be problematic.
Other suggested changes, however, are welcome. The Bill looks to enable online applications and payments for the licence as well as enabling tracking of applications. In addition, there are several changes that will contribute to better enforcement of the rules and encourage better road user behaviour. For example, if a person fails the driving test or has their licence suspended or disqualified for any reason, to obtain a valid licence or get their licence reinstated, they must pass a refresher course. The devil, of course, is in the detail; the syllabus, the administration of the refresher course, etc needs to be seen.
A national database
Currently, states are supposed to register all driving licences and vehicles in the state register using the softwares sarathi and vahan respectively. As a part of the going digital process, driving licences are supposed to become smart with readable chips embedded. However, all of this has been implemented to varying degrees even after several years. The Amendment Bill calls for the state registers to be subsumed into a national register. This, if implemented well and quickly, will be a good move. With a national register that is accessible by the concerned departments, repeat offenders can be flagged easily. Currently, if I violate a traffic rule, say I jump the red light, in Chennai and get a challan for it and then within no time I repeat this offence in another state, the police are going to fine me for a first offence instead of a second offence. So, essentially my driving history should show up every time I get pulled over for a violation. This is what the national register envisions.
In addition, the Bill calls for driving licences to be standardised across the country. So they would be the same shape, size, colour and have the same information laid out in the same way making it easy for authorities to process information.
A smart driving licence. Source: Zee News
Driving code
While most of these changes will help our licensing system become more transparent, accountable, enforceable, and streamlined, there is a fundamental elephant in the room that has to be addressed. The licensing system, the current or the hopefully improved version, does not have a robust testing system and an important component of that is having a clear rule book that licence applicants can use to learn the rules of the road. Most countries have a driving handbook or highway code; in India the RTO hands out a flimsy print out of the mandatory, cautionary, and information signs. No wonder then we find people with licences (to kill) who are completely unaware of concepts such as right of way, line of vision, and stopping distance. Most people either learn from family/friends or go to driving schools and both are unlikely to be good sources of information.
I lucked out in that my grandfather who drilled driving skills into two generations of the family was a stickler for the rules and very particular that we knew the logic behind a rule. If, today, I am a decent and safe driver, most of the credit, if not all, goes to my family for constantly drilling in safe driving into us even before we could legally drive. But shouldn’t this be the norm rather than the exception?
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