Focusing on one year less to pass the exam has its little demagogic stench. To appeal to cities to go clubbing on weekends, to seduce the countryside to make the movement of young apprentices going to classes more fluid, we can clearly see where the speech of Elisabeth Borne, follower of the second argument, is located. It would be admissible if it did not recognize, in hollow, the failures of public transport and did not come, by adding this new breed of juvenile motorists, to add its layer of pollution.
Because who can think that, after having spent 1,800 euros on average to get the license the first time (much more the following times with the commercialism of driving schools), the young applicant breaks his piggy bank to acquire a new car, even electric ? It is of course used second-hand items at low prices that will most often be chosen and… insured if there is a budget tail left. And basically, 17 or 18 years old is pretty much the same thing except that in a year, we can hope to gain in maturity.
Road safety associations have a good time stigmatizing the 18-24 year old segment of the population, twice as prone to accidents. Insurers will not be happy with this extension of the license area, which will have to be guaranteed, but at what price? Companies, cautious as banks, like to wait years for experience feedback to establish a grid of bonuses, which are almost always dissuasive.
We already fear an increase in uninsured drivers, “apprentices” in vocational training according to the reasoning of the Prime Minister, who will have to go often to town, to EPZs and pay to park. Government blindness to road safety issues is illustrated here with a fossilized driver’s license since the last big, real breakthrough, accompanied driving.
This has proven itself since the 1990s by allowing a young person as young as 15 today to take the wheel, under the control of a family mentor. But he could not take the exam before the age of 18, the proposal of Élisabeth Borne allowing him to take the exam at the age of 17 from January 1, 2024. This is basically the only real meaning of this reform which would have had to remain limited to early learning to drive (AAC). With him, the exam pass rate goes from 53% to 75%, which tends to show that age is less important than the educational framework.
However, the driving school stuck by its artisanal organization and a teaching of the driving which always ignores the essential – the emergency braking and the avoidance of obstacle -, is in no case a driving training . It’s just training to win the license without offending the limited certainties of the inspector. Because with the license in hand, the real learning then begins in a real situation, at the risk and peril of the community. With this reform, this will be done a year earlier with a population of disparate young people where the reasonable rub shoulders with the unconscious.