Originally Posted by
JDNSW
Needing a driving licence and needing to own a vehicle are not the same thing. Not having a driving licence severely restricts what jobs someone can get. For those living in rural areas the cost and availability of lessons would be much greater than those living in the city. Yet another example of discrimination based on where you (or more commonly your parents - most sixteen year olds have little real choice!) live.
Having said that, I would agree that professional instruction would in many cases be an advantage, but it would need to be demonstrated that professional instructors were actually more capable of correctly training drivers for this system to have any significant improvement on the present system - implying rigorous certification and increased costs.
And it should be pointed out that the driver error component in causing most road accidents result not from lack of skill, but from either attitude to life in general or the Dunning-Kruger effect - drivers who think they are more skilled than they are. (often amplified by whatever it is they have been drinking or taking) It seems unlikely that instructors who are not qualified psychologists would have much effect on this.
John