Motor testers union-1 Road Safety-0

dochasach · 16-03-2006 12:07am #1

The trade unions representing existing driving testers won a case against Cullen's plan to outsource driving tests. It looks like the tester's monopoly on road testing, using their peculiar testing methodology, will continue. Let's hope minister Cullen will at least create benchmarks of driving testing effectiveness which measures throughput as well as crash rate of passed vs failed drivers (controlling for road experience.) Or have previous transport ministers signed away all driving tester accountability as well?

Will we see owners of motoring schools dancing in the streets? RTE is reporting on testing waits "up to a year", when many of the testing centers have had waits well over a year for more than a year. 63 Weeks?

http://www.drivingtest.ie/drivingtest/HTMLContent/frameset.html

MrPudding · 16-03-2006 9:45am

And that is another example of why I love the unions. It is there single minded desire to look after the minority of the population at the expense of everyone else on the island that makes me give then the respect they are due.

MrP

Gurgle · 16-03-2006 9:53am

dochasach wrote:

Cullen's plan to outsource driving tests.

...yeah, that was going to go well!:rolleyes:

Zaph0d · 16-03-2006 10:01am

union: employment supply cartel

Nuttzz · 16-03-2006 12:32pm

The testers also have the ability to guarantee their work for life, a 50% fail rate ensures that they have a continuous supply of "customers" and this ruling has provided them with that 21st Century rarity, a job for life.

Gurgle · 16-03-2006 12:42pm

Nuttzz wrote:

The testers also have the ability to guarantee their work for life, a 50% fail rate ensures that they have a continuous supply of "customers" and this ruling has provided them with that 21st Century rarity, a job for life.

Unfortunately, its up to the DoE to decide what gets included in the test.

Benster · 16-03-2006 12:44pm

Ah, those testers and their unions. The easy life, where do I sign up?

Yet another reason why I want a united Ireland. Where the North takes over the South...

Sorry, I'm in an uncompromising mood today. Guess I'm just sick of hearing stories day after day of govt indecisiveness and failure to tackle vested interests for the benefit of the majority of this banana Republic.

Militant B.

Nuttzz · 16-03-2006 1:00pm

Gurgle wrote:

Unfortunately, its up to the DoE to decide what gets included in the test.

thats true but if the backlog was cleared then would there be question marks about the numbers of testers needed, would it not be in the interest of the testers to ensure that they have a ready supply of "customers" so long as they maintain a backlog they maintain their jobs, if you fail a test it is their opinion that you have failed, there is no third party verification or appeal that a driving test is being run correctly. So long as the testers control the supply they will have a job for life

MrPudding · 16-03-2006 1:13pm

Gurgle wrote:

Unfortunately, its up to the DoE to decide what gets included in the test.

This is true but the actual passing or failing seems to lack objectivity. Is there a way to measure "progress" in a empirical, objecttive, consistant and repeatible fashion? The same for hesitating at junctions.

Fomr what I hear of the test it would be very easy for the testers to fail someone should they want or need to.

MrP

Calina · 16-03-2006 3:50pm

Actually, when you're done whinging about the unions, can I get a spoke in and say this: outsourcing driver testing is not, in my opinion, the fastest or safest route to reducing driving test waiting times. I don't know what it is about this country that makes people think outsourcing will fix everything. It doesn't.

A horrific number of people fail their driving tests first time out. Why is that? Because our driver training system is totally unregulated. Sort out driver training and the chances are the failure rate will fall. That in itself will have a knock on effect on the numbers waiting. Make it mandatary for people to take a specific number of driving lessons from an accredited instructor before they can get a licence that allows them on the road. Enforce the accompanied driving rule. Things like that.

Then we could look at compelling people to re-take driving tests if they get banned, for example.

Zaph0d · 16-03-2006 4:27pm

Calina wrote:

Actually, when you're done whinging about the unions, can I get a spoke in and say this: outsourcing driver testing is not, in my opinion, the fastest or safest route to reducing driving test waiting times. I don't know what it is about this country that makes people think outsourcing will fix everything. It doesn't.

The Irish driver testing service has been grotesquely dysfunctional for the last 30 years. No private supplier to government would have been allowed to renew its contract year after year with such farcical performance. Six years ago this report by the government auditor detailed a service that has failed at mangement and worker level for many years and shows no likelihood or inclination to change. Amongst the problems listed were inconsistency of testing across testers and test centres, failure to carry out any demand planning, refusal to allow temporary testers to be hired even in the face of year long waiting lists, massive payments for travel expenses to driving testers, financial mismanagement to a degree that management could not break even supplying a monopoly service. In short all of them should have been taken out and shot years ago.

A horrific number of people fail their driving tests first time out. Why is that? Because our driver training system is totally unregulated. Sort out driver training and the chances are the failure rate will fall. That in itself will have a knock on effect on the numbers waiting.

failure rates are actually lower in Ireland than in the UK. Few would suggest that the driving test is actually harder here than in the UK, so the bar is probably too low already and we should be failing more candidates not less.

Yes it is amazing that the government could set up the Driver Instructor Register 15 years ago and not have found the time to make it compulsory for testers to join them by now. Yes it would cost nothing to make a certain number of lessons mandatory prior to a test. They didn't do this because they don't care about road deaths and neither do we because we vote them in.

dochasach · 16-03-2006 11:20pm

Zaph0d wrote:

The Irish driver testing service has been grotesquely dysfunctional for the last 30 years. No private supplier to government would have been allowed to renew its contract year after year with such farcical performance. Six years ago this report by the government auditor detailed a service that has failed at mangement and worker level for many years and shows no likelihood or inclination to change. Amongst the problems listed were inconsistency of testing across testers and test centres,

So, someone in the transport department knows what's wrong, and knows how to fix it but chose to sit on their arse for 6 years while the carnage continues? Why doesn't this surprise me?

failure rates are actually lower in Ireland than in the UK. Few would suggest that the driving test is actually harder here than in the UK, so the bar is probably too low already and we should be failing more candidates not less.

Judging by what I've seen on the road here they are certainly passing the wrong candidates, I have no idea whether they might be failing the right ones.

If this were a company, concerned with objective measurable quality criteria, they would gather statistics on the crash rate of passed vs failed drivers for each instructor, controlling for driving experience. They would use this knowledge to determine whether a tester should be retrained or be transferred to a position within the department of agriculture.

Or they would take a random sample of passed and failed drivers, pay them to take an independent test in a country with similar laws but a lower crash rate than Ireland. They might send the driving testers to the U.K. to see if any of them can pass the test in a place with 1/2 the per mile vehicular death rate.

Or they might use DGPS during each test to measure how much faster the average speed and acceleration is on passing drivers than on failing drivers. Then they would look at crash statistics and see if there is any correlation between speed and crash fatalities. Hmm, they might say, there seems to be a positive correlation so why are we failing drivers for not driving fast enough? Oh tester Ferd had an uncle who had a cousin who believed an urban folklore that if you slow down before you reach the intersection or don't pull at least 2 Gs accellerating towards a pedestrian, you might cause the even more insane driver behind you to bend your arse bumper.

Yes it is amazing that the government could set up the Driver Instructor Register 15 years ago and not have found the time to make it compulsory for testers to join them by now. Yes it would cost nothing to make a certain number of lessons mandatory prior to a test.

First set up the register with objective criteria, have an instructor testing and licensing program. Only then does it make any sense to require a minimum number of hours instruction for inexperienced drivers. Many current "instructors" are taking your money an are teaching something, but they aren't teaching safe driving or even "how to pass the test" (Which no one has proven has anything to do with safe driving.) The only experienced driver I've known to pass the road test on the first go completely ignored the nonsense his driving instructors told him, and just drove.

Disclaimer: Yes I'm bitter that I listened to a clueless instructor who told me absolute rubbish and who spent all of my lessons talking on her mobile phone. By the next time around, some 50 weeks hence, I hope to have forgotten her misinformation so I can rely on my 25 years and a quarter of a million crash free miles of defensive driving experience in a country with a much higher standard for road safety. It would be nice if we could have some reform before I reach the front of the queue but since we've not seen a hint of reform in 6 years, I won't get my hopes up.

shltter · 17-03-2006 3:09am

The Unions look to have a deal that they signed with government enforced (shocking)

That is why they negotiate and sign deals with the Government

There is a way out of this the government employs more testers
Instead the Government prefer to pay current testers ridicolous ammounts of money in overtime and travelling expenses so that they can keep up the keep the economists happy that they have not created anymore public sector jobs
It is a false economy based on the number employed rather than the cost something similar happens in the health service where agency nurses are employed at greater expense because they don't appear on the books as an employee so the embargo on public sector jobs is maintained.

And the reason people fail the driving test is because they can not drive to a sufficent standard the reason they cannot drive to that standard is not the testers fault it is because

(a) the standard of driving instructors is dismal with no regulation as to who can and can not teach.

(b) People do not take sufficent training. How many people take a couple of pretests the fortnight before their test and expect to pass.

Just as a post script NCT had won the contract to provide these testers given their history of employing NCT testers who had no mechanical experience or qualification it is probably a lucky break that the unions managed to put a stop to this.
Once private companies come into the equation then profit becomes the motive the level of tester is decided by who will do the job cheaply rather than who can do the job best.
Not to mention that if the private company is given the job of clearing the backlog would that not create a conflict of interest as they would be responsible for removing people from the backlog whilst also responsible for ensuring that they are fit to be removed from the back log.

murphaph · 17-03-2006 11:17am

shltter wrote:

mention that if the private company is given the job of clearing the backlog would that not create a conflict of interest as they would be responsible for removing people from the backlog whilst also responsible for ensuring that they are fit to be removed from the back log.

I agree with most of what you say, ie, we need more full time testers to match our growing motoring population but just to address the above point; the contracts were to be for x thousand tests, regardless of result, at which point another tender may be required so it would not necessarilly be in the first tenderers interests to go out of it's way to fail people as the government may get a tad suspicious and that company may have difficulty in securing another contract for another x thousand contracts.

Motor testers union-1 Road Safety-0

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