Frankly I think our current licensing system is too expensive, for what you get out of it... If that $5000 included skid pad training and the like I can see how it would be worth it.
Our current licensing system is about 200 dollars total. Then you tack on whatever costs you encounter with instructors. Which is pretty dirt cheap. Sure you dont get much out of it and it shows with the standard of drivers.
The cost of 5000 dollars (or whatever cost) that people keep talking about covers a few things. The bulk of it is simply instructors. In some European countries you MUST hire an instructor, it also covers things that you would call a defensive driving course.
Defensive driver courses arent much, couple of hundred bucks and you get a fair bit out of it, tack that onto the standard drivers test and its still pretty cost effective as well as providing good training. If you cannot handle a car spinning out in the wet, you fail the test simple.
I just did a search for driving instructors and the first site i pulled up charges 260 bucks for 5 hours of training. 60 hours is ~3000 bucks. So I mean over 2 years, having 50% of your driver training done by a professional still isn't that expensive for a 16-18 year old with a after school job.
So lets say our new licensing scheme has a baseline pricetag of ~3500-4000 bucks. Over 2 years that isnt much, its stricker (having everyday drivers pass a defensive driver course would be funny
) than the current system where you do a 15 minute drive around the block, 1 parking test and away you go with you fancy new license.
...and if you add the the proviso that every X years you go back and do a refresher defensive driving course at a couple of hundred bucks it keeps it in their memory.
Then if you lose your license you are sent back to being, essentially, an L plater. Make them do the retesting process again which would be a hell of an incentive not to lose your 12 points.
