Distribution Of Driving Skills and Abilities
We find it useful to conceptualise the range of driving skills and abilities that people have with reference to the Normal Distribution or Bell Curve model shown below.
Under this model the majority of drivers, 75% in fact, meet or exceed expectations in terms their standard of driving and should generally be left alone by the police.
Their actions are reasonable and generally safe. Whilst they could still be improved, as a matter of natural justice they should not attract punishment from an authoritarian Police State.
About 15% of drivers fall below expectations despite having undergone driver training and passed a DVSA approved driving test.
Even the best drivers make mistakes from time to time and when they do we tend to blame and, worse still, punish them for these human errors. Meanwhile no learning is caputured to feed back into the training and licensing system
This is the driver training element which our Reforms 2 and 3 seek to address.
Provided these drivers have the right attitude and are willing to learn and improve, they should be afforded the opportunity to become better drivers of their own volition and encouraged to do so.
The role of the Police and the DVSA in these circumstances should be to help and encourage them in their aspriations to become better drivers and punishment and coercion should have no role to play!
Punishment should be reserved for drivers in the left hand 10% of the curve who are the true menace on the roads because of their wilfully dangerous or negligent actions eg driving under the infuence of drink or drugs, driving whilst disqualifed or in the course of commiting a crime etc.
These are the rogue drivers are responsible for the majority of ‘Killed and Seriously Injured’ (KSI) crashes
By putting police road traffic patrols back on the roads, our Reform 3, would enable the police to be laser focussed on them, singling them out for immediate remedial action including taking them off the road through disqualification in order to protect themselves and other road users from becoming victims.
The bottom lice is we absolutely do not approve of criminalising ordinary decent people just for being human and making occasional mistakes, especially when the rogue element seem to get away with blue murder.