Benz spokesman slates driver training

"Driver training in this country is a disgrace," says David McCarthy. The Senior Manager for Corporate Communications at Mercedes-Benz Australia spoke with his usual candour to motoring.com.au last week concerning the road toll.

Through his long-standing employment with Mercedes-Benz, a company renowned for its focus on road safety, McCarthy is more aware than ever of the failure by successive state governments to provide young drivers with the necessary resources to survive on the roads. The Benz exec was particularly scathing of driver training in his home state of Victoria.

"The simple fact is, in Victoria, you can get a licence and never be re-tested," he said. "I'm sorry, I think road conditions, road rules and people's driving ability might have changed something over the 60 years from when they got a licence — or the five years from when they got a licence.

"While steps have been made with 'Arrive Alive' and such things, our driver training and licensing are pitiful... it's pathetic."

McCarthy sees, from the very fact that Benz's First Gear courses are booked out, that there's a perception within the community that standard driver training doesn't go far enough, doesn't really prepare drivers for the sort of dangers they will encounter on the roads.

"You have active and passive safety systems [in cars], but [the car companies] can only do so much... if people don't understand that they have a lethal weapon at their disposal, that can kill them and can kill others.

"And the simple fact is, the driving tests and licensing systems in this country ignore that.

"Is there a question in the test: 'How long does it take [to come to a full stop] from 60km/h on a wet road?'," he asked rhetorically.

It's McCarthy's view that when we look back on the early years of the 21st Century, we will see a massive reduction in road fatalities in a very short space of time. But that will be largely attributable to safer cars, which are progressing at a far faster rate than government initiatives are, yet state governments slap themselves on the back for successfully reducing the road toll — largely through a process of negative reinforcement, penalising drivers.

"Government [likes] to claim credit for reducing the road toll — it's crap. Collisions are survivable and predominantly, ESP avoids them, or reduces the speed at which they happen, or the attitude of the car. If we were relying purely on what government has done to reduce the road toll... all that they've done is increase the balance in Treasury."

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...