ICBC justifies age-related licensing conditions
Lives saved by stronger rules for new drivers.
Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General.
Stronger rules for the Graduated Licensing Program (GLP), which took effect in 2003, saved at least 31 lives and prevented 17,500 crashes involving new drivers in the three-year period following the changes, Solicitor General Kash Heed announced today.
“This government toughened the rules for new drivers six years ago, and it has been a public safety success,” Heed said. “The number of crashes dropped by 28 per cent, and most importantly there were 4,000 fewer crashes with injuries.”
ICBC examined crash rates before and after the changes to the GLP, and used comparison groups of other drivers to rule out demographics, weather or other external factors for the decrease in crashes. In the program’s first three years, the new driver crash rate dropped by almost 16 per cent.
The GLP program began in 1998, and in 2003 it was enhanced with these changes:
-
The learner stage was extended from six months to one year.
-
The novice stage was extended from 18 months to two years, with the provision the novice driver not have any driving prohibitions for 24 consecutive months.
-
For learners, the supervisor age requirement was raised from 19 to 25 years.
- Novice drivers were restricted to carrying one passenger unless accompanied by a supervisor, or unless the passengers are immediate family members.
“Increasing restrictions for learner and novice drivers gives them time to learn essential road safety skills and attitudes that save lives and reduce injuries,” Heed said.
Starting Jan. 1, 2010, drivers in the GLP program will not be permitted to use hand-held or hands-free cellphones, or any other electronic device while driving. New drivers, particularly the 16-24 age group, use electronic devices more and that, combined with their inexperience, makes this group even more vulnerable to driver distraction.
“GLP has made roads safer for everyone,” said Fred Hess, ICBC’s vice-president of licensing. “We want to thank young drivers for making smart choices in the GLP and helping to make our roads safer for everyone.”
Heed and Hess announced ICBC’s research findings at Killarney Secondary school in Vancouver, where 31 students dramatized the GLP’s impact and the number of lives saved.
For more information on the Graduated Licensing Program:
http://icbc.com/driver-licensing/getting-licensed/graduated-licensing.
For the full evaluation of the GLP enhancements:
http://icbc.com/driver-licensing/getting-licensed/graduated-licensing/glp-report.
Vancouver
November 27, 2009
Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General
2009PSSG0038-000681
Young adults can go to college or university and still not be a qualified driver. A young adult could join the military and be fighting overseas BUT not get a full licence here. What’s the message we’re sending?
The message anonymous in regards to graduated licenses for young adults is very simple.
Study after study after study indicates that without experience behind the wheel, without a steading balancing of hormones, young folks have a much greater propensity to have accidents while behind the wheel of a car or truck.
Therefore, why should society subsidize drivers that are prone to accidents while driving which will increase costs for that self same insurance, cause greater heart ache and pain for the victims of poor driving.
That is why graduate driving licenses have been instituted. That is why cumpulsory driving examinations and training should be implemented. That is why, adults should be periodically tested. The half life for driving knowledge and rules of the road is about 7 years. in other words, we lose half of what we learned in regards to driving knowledge of road rules.
That is the message.
The GLP is utterly ridiculous. It targets EVERY new driver just because 5% of them either lack the basic common sense every driver should have, or are morons in fast cars their parents bought them. It constantly enrages me that I must wait three years to get my full licence, and that I must take and pay for TWO driving tests, and three seperate licences. Add that to my already unfairly high premiums. If the GLP should exist at all, the L should be back at six months, followed by a driving test. The N should last one year, with a zero-blood alcohol rule, and one should be allowed to carry as many pasengers as the vehicle has seat belts for. If the year passes with no convictions, at-fault accidents or tickets, the class five should be granted automatically. Otherwise, the year starts over again. Want to whine? Contact me at buff_mcstick@yahoo.com , and I’ll tell you a million reasons why the GLP has had its day.
Hi Spenny. Don’t you know that ICBC doesn’t have to make any sense? They are a crown corporation and have their own little world, which they run with very little interference or oversight from the government.
Consider yourself lucky if you can get any licence. I have been driving for more decades than I can remember, and have driven millions of mles without EVER having been involved in an accident. I have Autoplan’s highest rating and would make a good poster-child model driver for them. Except for one little thing… I cannot get a licence.
Yeh, really. I do not and cannot meet the ID requirements as they have become since REAL ID came to BC. And the reason is simple, but insoluble.
To get a BC driver’s licence you need primary and secondary ID documents. For a Canadian born, the primary will always be your birth certificate. No problem, I have that. It’s the secondary ID that is the problem, because I cannot get any.
When I first got licensed I don’t recall needing any ID — just a phone call to my parents to confirm I was 16. Now everyone wants ID for even the most trivial thing. It has gotten pretty ridiculous.
Anyway, to get ID you have to build it in a certain sequence, because getting ID requires ID. So the path everyone starting from scratch must take is to first get a birth certificate. That part is a pain but not an obstacle for me.
Then you need to take the birth certificate and get MSP. There is no other acceptable ID you can get with just a birth certificate except MSP (Care Card). Unfortunately I cannot get that, and so the whole show ends there. No MSP, no driver’s licence or banking or postal service or a gazillion other things.
Forget for the moment that I cannot afford MSP but have to pay for it anyway because I cannot get a SIN number without photo ID (which requires MSP), and so cannot have it free, even though my income is well within the subsidy limits.
The reason I cannot get MSP is because MSP does not recognize / accept the name on my birth certificate. It meets their requirements, but they still won’t accept it.
The reason? My name was changed in the seventies in another province and that name change is not recognized in BC. So even though my legal name is on my out-of-province birth certificate, MSP does not recognize it.
This is obviously unfair, and in BC there is an agency set up to deal with such situations — it’s called the BC Ombudsman. I asked them to look at the problem, and they called MSP. They confirmed all the facts I had complained about, but then went on to say that they could do nothing because they could not substantiate my complaint. Say what? … My request for clarification of that confusing contradiction went unanswered (actually, several followup requests went unanswered).
That, unfortunately, is the sorry state of BC’s bureaucracies nowadays. They don’t seem to know their butts from their ears, and their dysfunction is leaving people like me in annoying situations.
I have a new truck sitting here that I bought in the summer and cannot register, although I am REQUIRED to do so within 10 days, and to register it in my own name. But ICBC will do neither.
Just the other day I was told I could not get postal service because I don’t have photo ID – but of course I cannot get photo ID, and even if I could you must have a postal address to get it and cannot use a care-of address.
This reminds me of the people in the last US election who suddently needed photo ID. To get photo ID they needed a birth certificate. But to get a birth certificate they needed photo ID. And so they could not vote.
And so I cannot drive…
Kind of makes you wonder where this world is headed when no one has enough common sense to sort out a simple thing like this. Maybe George Orwell was right.
Hi there Spenny
I see your point about the 5% making all the rest of the youth pay the piper. But have you ever considered the idea that , because of that alleged 5% of young idiots, all the adults have to pay as well? We are the ones who have been paying the insurance premiums for maybe 40 or 50 years. You are just beginning, my friend. Wait a few more years and you will be singing a different tune about a whole new generation of idiots!
Good luck with that one!
Actually Spenny, the numbers of ” young ” adults that fall into the catagory studied to death was not 5% but rather 100%.
What they were / are addressing is the majority of young adults, youths, under 22 for instance that do not have the snapsyses firing on all cylinders is all of those young kids Not 5%.
And yes, to protect the majority of adults and kids in the world, ICBC and any other insurance company will not go our and prove thay you or your neighbour’s kid / young adult does not fit the profile.
For the purposes of insurance, age is a factor, experience is a factor and location is a factor. Young, male 1 or 2 years of experience spells a reciept for accidents. Does not matter if it is rural or urban.
Sorry but really, you are going to have to suck it up, and realize that all those that are older and more experienced have dealt with it in the past and have moved on.
Life is not always fair to the minority but it certainly is to the majority and that is what governments have to consider and that is what insurance companies have to consider. – the majority.
Since when is “majority” the same thing as 100%? I think you are just perpetuating the stereotypes of age and gender.