Why don’t we make drivers retest every few years to keep their licences? Every time I’m on the road, I see behaviour that would be an instant fail. Everyone could take the written test and road test every five years when they renew their licences. If they’re good drivers, they have nothing to worry about. It seems like a no-brainer to me. – Maurice, Ottawa
When it comes to forcing every driver to take a test to stay on the road, most governments would likely take a hard pass, safety experts say.
“Everyone would lose their licence,” said Sean Shapiro, a road safety consultant and former Toronto traffic cop. “If we can’t put speed cameras on roads because people are offended, adding a [requirement] where you have to study and actually pass would make people lose their minds.“
Everywhere in Canada except Nunavut has graduated licensing. So, once you pass your first road test, you get a conditional licence that allows you to drive without another driver supervising you.
Once you pass your final road test and get your full licence – for instance, the G in Ontario – you typically don’t have to take a road test again.
There are exceptions. In Ontario, for instance, you may have to take a road test again at any age if there’s a diagnosed medical concern that could affect your driving or when you’re 80 and older if you fail either a vision or a cognitive test.
That means most drivers over 80 aren’t being tested on the road.
Also, depending on the province, you may have to retest if your licence has been suspended.
Skill-testing questions?
But most drivers will be on the road for decades without ever having their skills or knowledge reassessed – and that’s a problem, said Angelo DiCicco, chief executive officer of the Ontario Safety League (OSL), a Mississauga-based non-profit that focuses on driver education.
“I honestly think all drivers should be retested [on the road] every three to five years,” DiCicco said. “When’s the last time anyone asked you to demonstrate your proficiency of skill in low-speed manoeuvers? Or about your knowledge of [newer] rules of the road like slow down and move over for emergency vehicles? Or about distraction? Or what a community safety zone is?“
If it’s been 10 years or longer since you were last tested, you may have forgotten some rules and learned to ignore others, such as signalling before changing lanes or coming to a complete stop before turning right at a stop sign or red light, he said.
Or, if you’ve moved to another province, you may not know all the local rules.
“Somebody coming from Ontario sees a flashing green light in [British Columbia] and they think it’s an advance left turn,” DiCicco said. “And then they turn left in front of oncoming traffic because that’s not what it means there.“
Even the nearly empty roads at the start of the pandemic made many of us pick up bad habits, he said.
“There were a number of [newer] drivers who weren’t getting as much experience at the time and those who were driving got used to a much more limited volume of traffic,” he said. “And [if you got your licence then], many jurisdictions softened requirements for road tests to get through the backlog. And I think we’re seeing some of those effects now.”
Also, during the pandemic, most driver training courses shifted from classroom to online, which means even drivers who’ve taken road safety courses since then may not be fully prepared for driving, DiCicco said.
“You need an instructor and other drivers having a conversation about [what actually happens on the road],” he said.
Insurance break?
We asked Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation (MTO) whether it has ever considered requiring retesting for all drivers. It didn’t answer the question. For any provincial government to consider mandatory retesting, there would have to be widespread public support for the idea, DiCicco said. He doesn’t think that will ever happen.
Instead, provinces could require your insurance company to give you a discount if you voluntarily take a written test and a road test, he said.
“The provincial regulators and the insurance companies could provide a carrot for those of us who are self-aware enough to be reevaluated every three to five years,” DiCicco said.
In Ontario, at least, there’s a precedent. Since 2016, the province has required insurance companies to offer a discount of up to 5 per cent if you put on winter tires.
So, are any insurance companies considering this? The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) didn’t directly answer the question but said good drivers already get rewarded with lower insurance rates.
“The longer you have a clean driving record, the lower your premiums will be compared to someone with at-fault collisions or traffic violations,” IBC spokesman Brett Weltman said in an e-mail. “So, in a sense, [this discount] already takes place.”
But DiCicco said retesting would give insurance companies more information on your driving abilities – especially if the testing was paired with classroom driving instruction.“
Insurance companies already started doing this with telematics (apps that monitor your driving for a set amount of time in exchange for a potential discount)," he said. “But that doesn’t necessarily help you learn what you should be doing.”
So if you did take the test, what would happen if you failed? Would your insurance company find out? Would you just lose the discount or could you lose your licence?
“That would need to be thought out,” DiCicco said. “Maybe you would need more training before you get tested again.”
But a testing program would likely be expensive – and to justify the costs, there would have to be proof that it makes roads safer, said Robyn Robertson, chief executive officer of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF), an Ottawa-based non-profit.
“Already licensing authorities are cutting road test requirements or eliminating them [for new drivers] to save money,” Robertson said in an e-mail.
Since drivers in their 40s and 50s are generally the safest drivers on the road, Robertson wonders how big a benefit there might be to voluntary retesting.
“[This] would require a prospective study tracking people over a period of years,” she said.
But retesting could have benefits for drivers in their 60s and 70s who are facing some early age-related issues, Robertson said.
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