A news item which has intrigued me lately is the question of how to resolve the problem of drivers in the UK passing their test and being able to drive on motorways without actually ever having driven on a motorway while they were learning. For those of you who are not in the UK, learner drivers are not allowed to drive on motorways, and so never have any practice on driving on them, yet can drive on a motorway as soon as they have passed their test. As you might imagine, suddenly going onto a motorway with no previous experience of driving on one can be quite intimidating and possibly dangerous.
The current way around this is for new drivers to take what is called the Pass Plus course after passing their test, which includes one session on motorway driving with their instructor. I did this and it's really helpful, but it's only one afternoon, so I still felt rather apprehensive about motorway driving. As a result, I'm of the view that more motorway driving experience would have been beneficial to me, as I'm still very reluctant to drive on them.
There has recently been a renewed drive towards making motorway driving an integral and compulsory part of learning how to drive and the test. It sounds like a great idea for improving safety and driving standards on paper, and initially I thought that it was a great idea. A few minutes after the item was initially aired on the radio, however, it occurred to me that there is a serious implementation problem with the idea. This is that there are a lot of areas of the UK where there are no motorways within a reasonable driving distance. Norfolk is one obvious example, along with whole of the north of Scotland, so how would drivers here be able to learn on motorways?
It seems, therefore, that there is no easy solution to this. I'm curious as to what the rest of you think about this subject, and whether anyone has any other ideas to solve this perennial problem.