I voice my opinion on the declining standards of driving from all quarters of the motoring public whether on 2 wheels right through to 12 wheels whether we drive for a living or just drive to work.
I am out there day in and day out going to the collisions seeing the poor driving along with the aggressive drivers along with the drivers who use their phone,speed,no seat belt cross solid white lines on the on and off the Motorway park within the confines of crossings the list goes on.
I also deal with incidents captured on CCTV cameras and from motorists who send in footage from dash cams, this along with my numerous colleagues who have there own work which we share and discuss,my opinion is from real life dealings not from Freedom of information requests or stats 19s.
So,for me that is my evidence that driving standards are declining or declined should I say, and a lot of it is due to having less traffic cops out there to Police the roads at times when these offences are being comitted.
If it was left to me the DVSA test at present would be at a basic advanced level with the basic advanced level being either the equivelent to a first or gold in terms of organisations standards.
I would have two parts to the ADI system one to teach PLH and the other to teach FLH and you either pass both or stick to one, but that is my opinion.
I was once a member of public you know before I joined the Police in fact a LGV driver for 15yrs then I got trained to drive for a living I wasnt born into the job, not everyone has the ability to become a Police advanced driver and that goes for Police officers as well there are ones who have been told that they have not got what it takes to drive to AD standard even after about 4 seperate Advanced courses.
I think everyone gets hung up about Police driving in the sense of that they have to try and drive as fast as them , that couldnt be more further from the truth, what can be acheived though is the polish the smoothness and everything else that is associated with pure AD like commentry and Observations and linking them together.
As for Observing skills thats a different story all together and like driving there are different standards of Observers due to their experience and enthusiasm perhaps a different thread
. After all we are all driving enthusiasts, we all need to just focus on how good we are and not be too critical about others, and continue to do what we do and that is to try and make the roads a lot more safer to drive on.