Good Comments

It is both:

1. Too easy to get a driver's license.
2. Too easy to keep a driver's license when you abuse the priviledge.

If you step back and look at other aspects of life that give people the power to main or kill dozens of people with a simple button-press kind of action (such as firearms ownership), and compare that to driving, you can see how blase we are as a society in letting virtually anyone who can pass a simple test drive whenever and wherever they want.

Furthermore, we don't punish abuse of driving anywhere near enough. If a firearm owner randomly fired into the air while celebrating New Year, and the bullets landed and killed or maimed people, you can be sure they would spend decades in prison. On the flipside, with careless or dangerous driving offences (a morally equivalent danger), you barely get a handful of years in prison at the maximum, often even a tiny a token punishment - if there is a "reasonable" rationalisation to the actions.

Driving should be treated with much more respect and seriousness all round. Getting a license should be gruelling and difficult, and losing it for long periods of time should be the norm for any and all "carelessness" offences.
Guzica Melbourne - January 04, 2010, 8:20AM

While a cyclist can make you late, a motorist can make you dead. Many drivers forget how vulnerable other road users are.
Marty - January 04, 2010, 8:20AM

More here.