More on Driver retesting

I had a short chat this evening with a fellow curler, who said (if I remember correctly :):

* Now that Ontario has privatized the driver testing program, the wait for an examination is a couple of days, not months.

* The problem in Ontario really is driver skill (well, the lack thereof), and not congestion; European roads are much more congested than ours, but their accident rates are lower.

* As for the money, it turns out that we (Ontario) spend about 95 million dollars a year on hospital care for the victims of non-fatal accidents. That’s a whole lot of money to apply to a) retesting, and b) other parts of the healthcare system…

It’s all moot, however, since “McGinty came out and said no”:http://ottawa.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=ot_returns20040406.

bq. on Tuesday, Premier Dalton McGuinty told reporters that mandatory retesting was “just not on” for Ontario drivers.

posted at 10:20 pm on Tuesday, April 06, 2004 in Random Thoughts | Comments (1)

1 Comment

  1. Jeff K says:

    You must not have heard me the first time [well other than an attempt construe “n00b” into “foreigner”]. Twice zilch is zilch, so there’s no $95,000,000 to be saved. And my lord, where does your buddy get his statistics? “The Sun” or something? French roads are unbelievably lethal. (8000/year): http://inserviceextra.firechief.com/ar/transportation_french_road_death/
    (1 in 7522 population)

    (841 in Ontario) http://www.wsib.on.ca/wsib/wsibsite.nsf/public/referenceroadsafety
    (1 in 14000 population)

    and fewer people drive in France!

    Anyway $95M / 85,000 injuries = $1117. Or less neo-con of me, $95M/10M = $9.50. A driver’s test is probably a $50 thing. Anyway, I didn’t check that stat of yours. $1117/incident seems low. (Approximately 2.6 cents per day per population).

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