A licence to ride

It often strikes me how certain items of news become fashionable. They are the sexy news stories of the day. If someone such as Joe Duffy gets a hold of the story it is likely it will run and run. There will be a few days of fantastic indignation. It might even make it to the floor of the Dáil. Irate – that’s a great word for this sort of thing – people will telephone the chat shows and so the story keeps running.

Do you remember sometime last year there was all the hullabaloo about changing the laws relating to provisional driving licences. Minister Dempsey made some sort of a ruling that in order for a person with a provisional licence to drive a car they would have to have a person with a full licence sitting beside them.

Great uproar and indignation – another of those words – ensued. Indeed, the uproar was so great that the poor minister had to back pedal and the implementation of the new regulations was delayed.

They are now in force. This means that if you have a provisional licence you must have a person with a full licence sitting beside you in the car.

I wonder how the gardaí are enforcing the new regulation?

And in the midst of all the furore and indignation nobody seemed to give two hoots about the law concerning the driving of motorbikes.

There is no doubt about it. We are a funny little nation.

When it comes to the danger game, I imagine everyone would agree that a motorbike is a far more dangerous animal that the meek little car!

And guess what the current regulations for driving a motorbike are?
Let me explain.

You go along and do the theory test. This test applies to anyone who wishes to obtain a provisional licence. You sit in front of a computer screen and the screen throws up 40 random questions from a set of prescribed questions. The examinee has to answer correctly at least 35 out of 40 questions. On passing this test it’s off to the oculist for an eye test. So with the two certificates plus two pictures you head to the Motor Tax office and procure your provisional driving licence.

With the magic provisional licence and someone sitting beside you with a ‘full driving licence’ you are permitted to drive on the road even if you never in your life sat behind a wheel.

So after an initial period of ‘driving’ you apply to sit the driving test.

Having passed my driving test first time for both a car and a bus I don’t have to be ashamed to say I failed my motorbike test first time. Of course I was disappointed, even mad.

I walk out of the test centre feeling depressed and dejected having been given the deadly news.
This is where an Irish solution to an Irish problem kicks in. There I am standing in Spa Road with a failed piece of paper in my hand. And what does the State allow me do? Yes, right first time. I am allowed throw my leg over my Honda 680 and head off into the sunset on it.
Of course it suited me fine. But it must be daft.

A motorbike can be a dangerous vehicle. So how come the State went to all sorts of trouble to try to improve safety among drivers of cars who have provisional licences and never a word about motorbike drivers who have provisional licences?

And what’s even stranger is that not a single journalist or newspaper highlighted the anomaly.
It sure is a funny old country. Funny old newspapers too that they have never picked up on the story.

I’m back doing my test later this month. Gosh I better pass it.

Just hope they don’t change the rules before I pass the test.