[jambutty]

Originally Posted by entwisi

I agree with Rindy and have said so on more than oen occasion on AW. retests every 5 years irrespective of age should be compulsory. It will improve teh standard of driving considerably. I see far too many poor drivers on the roads for there to be any other answer. Who would pay is one question that has been levied. It costs this country billions in lost production, health services, Police, insurance etc. A simple 1 hour test would be sufficient to test the majority of driving skills. and is not a big ask of everyone every 5 years

On the face of it re-testing every driver every few years makes sense but have you thought it through. There is always a waiting list to take a driving test now so imagine what it would do if re-tests were introduced. I reckon that test centres would have to expand by a factor of five to cope with the extra workload. If nothing else it would take years to train the extra examiners needed.

There are upwards of 10,000,000 drivers in this country so let us assume that a re-test is required every five years that would be upwards of 2,000,000 per year. Even if re-tests were carried out 7 days a week it would still mean 5,479 re-tests per day countrywide.

It just wouldn’t be practical.

Probably a better solution would be to make each new driver take an advanced driving course and test no later than 5 years after they passed the test. If they don’t take the test during that time they lose their license until they do.