Recent changes in training and examining of candidates for drivers did not bring expected results. Although it is very difficult to get a driving licence, it is still the youngest drivers who cause most accidents. Passing the driving exam does not guarantee that they will be safe participants of the traffic. Young drivers (up to 24 years) with little experience (up to 2 years) cause about 20 percent of all road accidents. In the past 10 years, the percentage of that group of accident perpetrators increased by 10 percent.
From the beginning of last year new regulations have come into force. They introduce solutions which aim at improving safety in the road traffic by increasing the quality of driver training.
Therefore, NIK decided to check if the new system of training and examining candidates for drivers functions properly and positively impacts safety in the road traffic.
NIK will examine to what extent new rules help liquidate negative phenomena reported in the past years, related to the process of obtaining driving licences.
NIK will also check how public administration units oversee the process of training and examining candidates for drivers and granting driving licences to them.
NIK is currently conducting audits in selected local governments at the county level, city councils and marshal offices as well as provincial road traffic centres, checking e.g.:
- quality of supervision over the performance of medical examinations and conduct of psychological tests in terms transport psychology and issue of relevant decisions,
- facilities, equipment and driver training areas owned by road traffic centres (whether they meet relevant requirements),
- reliability of training programmes and exams,
- examiners’ qualifications and conditions of hiring them,
- use of money from exams,
- training programmes and exams for persons who breached the law (by causing an accident or driving under the influence of alcohol),
- local governments’ use of data processed by the Central Register of Drivers.
NIK also wants to evaluate the functioning of the training and examining system (the current one and the previous ones, starting from 2010) using surveys. The survey, which is available on NIK websites, may be filled in by everyone who had the state driving test in the past five years. The questions concern the exam itself as well as the training quality.
There are about 400 thousand people applying for a new driving licence every year. Whether or not safety on the Polish roads will improve in the coming years will depend on how these people will be prepared to drive. NIK’s audit report will be published at the beginning of the second quarter of 2015.
